


Ab Astris

by hope_in_the_dark



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Alpha Centauri (Good Omens), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexuality, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Aziraphale doesn't remember Crowley, Aziraphale/Crowley First Kiss (Good Omens), Crowley Is A Pine Tree In Sunglasses, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Remembers Heaven, Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley remembers Aziraphale, Crowley-centric (Good Omens), First Kiss, Freddie Mercury - Freeform, Gen, Historical, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Memories, Memory Loss, Noah's Ark, Sdom va'Amora | Sodom and Gomorrah (Abrahamic Religions), South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), The Library of Alexandria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-01-25 01:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 87,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21348196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope_in_the_dark/pseuds/hope_in_the_dark
Summary: Before the Fall, StarMaker and Aziraphale were in love. They promised each other forever because they thought they’d have it. But then StarMaker Fell, and Aziraphale lost the memories of ever having known him.This is the story of a demon who loves an angel. This is the story of an angel who falls in love with a demon. This is the story of losing love and finding it again.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 672
Kudos: 392
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens, Bittersweet Good Omens





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> [Title Note: "ab astris" is Latin for "away from the stars"]
> 
> Hello! 
> 
> I was reading about the Aziraphale-remembers-Crowley-but-Crowley-doesn't-remember-him trope, and my brain said "Flip it." So I did, and here it is. This is my first not-human-AU story, so we will... we will see how this goes. It's also going to be sad for a while, but I promise it will end with fluff and happiness. 
> 
> For once in my life, I'm actually writing a few chapters ahead, but I'll still update randomly because it really depends on when I find time to write. 
> 
> As always, I promise to finish this, and I am so grateful for you all! Please feel free to let me know what you think.

They used to call him StarMaker. He had another name, of course, but it had long since been forgotten. No one used the names of the Fallen after they fell. No one remembered them. In the minds of all angels, Fallen or otherwise, there were large spaces in memories, big gaps in thoughts where their names should have been.

But the Fallen remembered the names of the angels. They remembered their faces, their roles, their shared moments and memories. They couldn’t remember their own, would never hear again the way that their names sounded rolling off of another’s tongue, but they could remember the names of the ones they used to love. Names, faces, laughs, smiles. Kisses, if they’d had them.

They remembered other things, too. Everything, really. They could remember every moment of Heaven, if they stopped to think about it. Singing, learning to fly, talking to the Almighty, doing their jobs.

And then there was Love, the worst of all remembrances. The most painful part of the fall was that every single one of the Fallen could remember feeling Love.

They could remember it in a full-color, surround-sound, phantom-touches kind of way. But they knew that they could never have it again. They’d lost it, had chosen to lose it, and they had no way to get it back.

Love had once been their greatest blessing, and so it was fitting that the intangible memory of it would be their greatest curse.

So, most of them stopped remembering it. Most of them found some way to block it out, some way to erase the memories that floated in every quiet moment. They immersed themselves in doing evil, created mundane tasks that didn’t need to be done just for the sake of having something to do. They had fallen, and they _were_ Fallen, and all but one of them acted the part.

*********

When StarMaker fell, it was graceless, and it burned. He landed in a coil of scales and muscle, surprised to find that he still had a heart and that it was beating. It felt like dying, but he wasn’t dead. It felt like the end of everything, but it hadn’t been. He’d just swapped Love for Loneliness, Joy for Despair, Peace for Pain.

He’d chosen it, a little, because he had asked too many questions that his siblings hadn’t liked. Michael had always looked at him like he was crazy, and Gabriel had always had a habit of speaking to him like he was a child who needed a dressing-down. Others, too, would laugh at his questions, but he’d always thought that when it came down the end of things, they would help them. He’d thought that they’d loved him.

But now, with his soul sunk into a new body that fit him in ways that were all sorts of _wrong_, he felt a phantom pressure on an arm that he didn’t even have, and he remembered Michael’s face as they hurled him over the edge of Heaven into an abyss that hadn’t been there before.

They’d done this. Maybe he’d chosen it, but he hadn’t leapt over the edge like the First or the First’s closest friends. He’d been pushed, thrown, cast down.

For the first time in his timeless life, StarMaker felt grief, and he mourned. He mourned for the family he’d lost, for a life he’d chosen and yet not chosen to leave.

He couldn’t remember everything about Heaven yet, but his brain was waking up and winding back the tapes of his memory, back from the moment he fell, back from fragments of Michael’s face and Gabriel’s hands wrapped around a sword. There had been a hand in his, once, warm and soft and attached to someone he loved very much. Back further, through glimpses of smiles and songs, back and back and… yes, there. A memory of what he’d been.

He had been a StarMaker, _the_ Starmaker, the one who learned how to spin burning gas into galaxies and bend dust into nebulas because the Almighty had built him to make the stars. He could remember himself as StarMaker because it was his job, and the Fallen could remember their jobs.

It wasn’t his name, but it was closer than nothing. Better than the nothingness that filled spaces in his memories.

_StarMaker_, he thought._ I can still be StarMaker._

He allowed himself to find momentary solace in that, managed to pause the frantic rewinding of his memory for long enough to draw a long breath into unfamiliar lungs.

But it didn’t last. It couldn’t have, not after StarMaker realized that he could no longer make stars. He couldn’t do what he’d been created to do, not anymore. There was no starstuff here in the damp-cold darkness. This place was devoid of the beautiful things necessary to build the sky. And then StarMaker understood something more, something worse: even if he’d been surrounded by stardust, even if this place had been filled with it, he’d lost the hands that he would need to create anything from it.

StarMaker’s body was plunged once more into inky black despair, but he didn’t have time to linger in that, either. The First was calling them, calling the Fallen forward, so StarMaker uncoiled and followed the masses, wincing at the feeling of his belly sliding over discarded feathers and uneven ground.

As he moved, he tried to find familiar faces, but there were none. Everyone looked different. Nearly everyone had been given entirely different shapes, and even the few with normal-looking bodies had horrible disfigurements that made them unrecognizable.

The First was one of the latter.

StarMaker, like everyone else, remembered how the First looked in Heaven. He’d been beautiful - one of the most beautiful ones, maybe, and StarMaker had sometimes wished to look a bit more like him. The First’s skin had been smooth and unblemished, a softly-browned color that was rare even among the many skin tones in Heaven. He’d had long hair, golden and falling in perfect ringlets, and a smile that came easily and drew attention. His voice had been low and smooth, and he’d used it to tell stories that made the bustling motion of Heaven grind to a halt.

All of that was gone now. His skin was burn-reddened and pockmarked with scars (and in some places, things that looked almost like the same scales that covered StarMaker’s body). His hair was replaced by a crown of soot-colored horns, and his smile was jagged like a shark’s.

His voice, StarMaker noted as a tingle crawled its way down his spine, was almost exactly the same. It was a bit rougher, but not in an unpleasant way. It was somehow more attractive than it had ever been before, and so when the First spoke, all of what would soon be named Hell stopped wailing and moaning and _listened_.

It was almost oxymoronic, really, the way that the First sounded. His voice was a seductive melody that passed between sharp teeth and burned lips, and it was terrible.

If StarMaker could have closed his eyes, he would have. He would have liked to forget that the First had become a monster because it would have been easier to believe the First’s speech of new beginnings and words of hope. He might have been able to believe the First, maybe, might have been able to let himself be persuaded _again_, if the First still looked like something StarMaker thought could ever be safe.

It was with that silken voice that the First gave StarMaker a new name.

“Crawly.”

StarMaker became Crawly because the First told him to. He got a name because he’d lost one, but it fit like his body. Wrong, pinching in strange places, too small for him.

He was Crawly, and he wasn’t, but no one cared at all why.

It was then that Crawly’s mind chose to remember something that he’d never imagined he could forget. Something, many somethings, _someone_. White curls and blue eyes, pink-flushed cheeks and a body cushioned with softness. A laugh that brightened Heaven, warm hands that slid into Crawly’s, strong arms made to bear a sword he hated that found a new purpose in holding Crawly.

_Aziraphale_.

Memories of Aziraphale flooded into Crawly’s mind like snapshots of bliss. They filled his head, and all Crawly could do was thank Someone that he hadn’t lost this, that there were still things about Aziraphale that he knew.

Aziraphale couldn’t sing to damn his soul, but his laugh was music. Crawly had only met him because he had stopped working to watch Crawly make the stars with such regularity that Crawly noticed him. Noticed him, remembered him, thought him beautiful. He was a foolishly brave principality who dared to speak to an archangel. He’d stopped that archangel’s heart with his smile. Aziraphale had kissed Crawly a hundred-thousand-million times. He had walked with Crawly through half-formed nebulas, and he hadn’t ever laughed when Crawly asked questions.  
Aziraphale was the love of Crawly’s immortal life, and Crawly was his.

Well, had been. Crawly _had been_ his love, but he wasn’t anymore. Crawly knew this as certainly as he knew anything else, and he knew it because he could remember Aziraphale’s name. He could remember it because Aziraphale still had the name he’d been given, could remember it because Aziraphale was still in Heaven.

While the rest of Hell slept that night, the demon known as Crawly became the first and last snake who was able to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here, and I hope you enjoy the story! 
> 
> Just as a note: comments will never ever be annoying to me. They make my day, honestly, so if you’re thinking of leaving one, know that I will read it and appreciate it and do my best to respond! Thank you for being here.


	2. Eden, The Dawn of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crawly is assigned to the Garden of Eden, and he is responsible for tempting the first humans. 
> 
> After the fall of humanity, Crawly sees someone he never thought he'd see again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, technically I probably shouldn't be posting this until I finish Chapter Three (since I'm trying to write ahead), but it's been a busy few days and I don't want to keep y'all waiting *too* long between updates. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the first real chapter! I hope you all like it - please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments or on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hopeinthedark1901)!
> 
> Thanks for reading, y'all. Hugs!

Crawly had been assigned to the Garden and the humans within it, and he was not having a very easy time of things. They’d told him to “Get up there and make some trouble,” and he was _trying_, but Adam was (in Crawly’s opinion), a bit too possessive of his wife for a bloke who had exactly zero competition for her affections. Because of this, Adam was always with Eve and Eve was always with Adam, which meant that Crawly was spending an awful lot of time slithering about and hiding in trees and becoming many different sizes to avoid the humans getting suspicious of him.

He knew that he had to tempt one of them into taking a bite of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and at first, Adam had seemed like the obvious choice. First to be created, first to be tempted. It felt like the natural order of things, really, and so Crawly had decided to watch and wait for the right - or rather, _wrong_ \- moment.

It turned out to be a very fortunate thing that he’d decided to wait instead of just going for it at his first chance. The more Crawly watched, the easier it was to see that Adam had everything that he needed or wanted, which was dangerous. He might say no to Crawly’s offer of knowing the difference between Good and Evil, and then he’d tell Eve to watch out for a certain serpent. If that happened, neither of them would sin, and Crawly would have to go back to Hell and face the boundless and timeless wrath of Satan (the First had chosen a new name for himself - it meant “adversary,” which was as good a self-descriptor as any).

Eve was different, though. While Adam was content to spend every waking (and sleeping) moment with his mind focused on and body wrapped around his wife, it looked like she didn’t quite feel the same way. She, in Crawly’s opinion, appeared to be getting quite tired of Adam hanging around _all the time_, which was something that Crawly could capitalize on.

So, contrary to the way that the story is understood by most, Crawly hadn’t offered her the Big Sin first. No, he’d decided to offer her something else entirely: space. Alone time. Solitude.

People often assume that when serpents speak, they hiss. This is true for actual serpents, who communicate in hisses, but it is not true for demons who merely _look_ like serpents. There was, of course, only one of those, and he was currently beginning to speak out loud for the first time since he’d entered the garden.

“Come with me,” Crawly said, uncoiling his long body from the tree branch that he’d been wrapped around so that he could look Eve in the eye.

Eve stared at him. “Why?”

“He’s sleeping.” Crawly bobbed his head in the direction of Adam, who was lying in the grass with his hands tucked behind his head. “Come on - I know a place where it’s a bit easier to breathe.”

“I’m fine here,” Eve said unconvincingly.

“Just for a moment.”

Eve gave him a Look (one which Crawly would see on the faces of every woman throughout the rest of human history). One of her eyebrows was raised in suspicion, and her lips were turned down at the corners.

“No harm will come to you,” Crawly promised. He knew how he looked; yellow eyes with slitted pupils, long forked tongue, sharp fangs. Not gentle, not safe, not something that should be trusted. Some reassurance was necessary. “I swear on God’s name.”

Punishment for breaking a promise sworn on God’s name is, of course, being cast out of the Almighty’s favor. Crawly was already as far from that as possible, so there was no reason for him to fear the consequences.

It was a good thing (bad thing?) that Eve didn’t know this because it made her trust Crawly enough to follow him through the trees and into a clearing that hadn’t been there a few moments before.

“See?” Crawly asked, winding up the side of a tree. “It’s quiet.”

“Yes.” The tension in Eve’s shoulders melted away, and she sank down into the grass facing Crawly.

“You can tell him that you need a bit of quiet, you know,” Crawly said, resting his chin on a low-hanging branch. “It won’t kill him to be away from you for a little every so often.”

She laughed. “It might. He probably thinks it would.”

Crawly made a show of turning his head toward the place where they’d left Adam (it was as close as he could get to looking over his shoulder). “He’s not dead now, is he?”

“No,” Eve said, and she smiled.

The smile was inconvenient because it made Crawly like her. Demons, one of his bosses had told him, are not supposed to like things. Demons are supposed to hate everything except for subverting the plans of Heaven. Demons are not supposed to have feelings.

But Crawly liked Eve, and he felt affection for her. This was not the way things were supposed to go. Crawly’s job was to use Eve to make humanity fall from grace, but he was finding himself thinking that he did not really want to do that at all.

It felt _bad_, this thing that he was doing, and not in the Hellish going-against-Good way. It felt bad in the way that things had felt bad before the Fall, bad in the way that made Crawly feel like he was doing something that he shouldn’t be. It felt bad morally, and the conscience that Crawly was not supposed to have was screaming at him to find some way to get out of doing this job.

There wasn’t a way out, though. If he fucked this up, he’d be thrown into Hell’s deepest pit and left there for all of eternity, which wasn’t something that he was particularly keen on subjecting himself to.

So, Crawly persisted, trying to ignore the fact that his insides had started twisting themselves into very complicated knots that would one day be given names by human sailors.

“You can come here whenever you want,” Crawly said, putting his head back onto the branch. “We can talk, if you want.”

Eve’s dark eyes brightened. “Really?”

“Sure.”

“You’re much smarter than the other animals, you know,” Eve said. “They aren’t very good conversationalists.”

Crawly didn’t exactly shrug (same no-shoulders problem again), but he did give a sort of wiggle that he hoped conveyed the same sentiment. “The Almighty must have decided to make me this way for a reason.”

_Of course I’m smart. I’m not an animal, not really. You should stop talking to me now, should clue in to the fact that I’m not just smart, I’m **too** smart._

“Yes, you’re right.”

They were silent for a while. Eve listened to the birds and ran her fingers through the grass, and Crawly watched her. Finally, Crawly dropped the short distance to the ground and slithered over to Eve’s feet, looking up at her.

Time to lay on the charm. “I like talking to you, Eve.”

“I like talking to you, too-” Eve frowned. “You haven’t given your name. I assume that my husband gave you one?”

Right, yes, Adam had given the animals their names, which meant that Crawly had another one. A third one. Not the one he’d lost and not the one that Satan had given to him, but one bestowed upon him by a man who’d been given the authority to dole out names like they were nothing.

“Serpent,” Crawly said, inclining his head slightly in a mock-bow. “I am Serpent.”

A startled cry wove its way through the trees and echoed in the clearing. Adam had, evidently, awoken from his nap.

Eve got to her feet with a sigh. “I should go.”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye, Serpent.”

“Goodbye, Eve.”

In the three seconds that followed their farewells, Crawly learned something about humans that would hold true for the entirety of human existence: they are unpredictable. He learned this because Eve reached down and placed her hand over his head, tracing her fingers along the sides of his jaw in a way that could almost have been considered a caress, and Crawly shivered.

No one had told him that humans could be so kind.

For weeks, Eve would do her best to find a few minutes in every day to come to Crawly’s clearing and talk to him. She told him about her day, most of the time, and when she was a little frustrated with Adam, Crawly did his best to reassure her of the Almighty’s good intentions (and what an ironic statement that was, coming from a demon). Crawly made her laugh and smile, and with every passing day, he grew more and more fond of her.

So, when the time came that he was certain Eve trusted him enough to eat from the Tree, Crawly spent the morning weeping. This was what he’d been sent here to do, but no part of him wanted to do it. It was self-preservation and nothing else, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like a heartless traitor.

He’d stopped crying by the time Eve came to him.

“Hello,” Eve said, sitting down in the grass next to where he was coiled.

“Hello. How are you?”

“Pregnant,” Eve said, and tried to smile.

“I can see that,” Crawly said kindly, bumping her stomach with his nose. “Congratulations.”

“I’m not- can this be- oh, nevermind.”

Crawly tilted his head. “You can tell me what you’re thinking, you know. I won’t tell anyone.”

Eve sighed. “I just… I’m not sure if this is _right_. Adam always being in control of things. Him being the stronger one, the one in charge. I don’t know… I don’t know if it’s right, that’s all.”

Crawly couldn’t have planned this better if he’d tried. He’d known that Eve was intelligent, of course; it would have been impossible for him not to have figured that out. But here she was doubting, questioning things, asking for clarification on the Almighty’s plans.

Like he’d done, once upon a time. It had been good enough for him to Fall, and it would be good enough for her.

She’d unknowingly served herself up on a silver platter. He’d thought that he would have to do some serious work to talk her into eating from the Tree, but no. No, she’d do it herself if he gave her the right push.

“You can find out,” Crawly suggested, swallowing his guilt and placing his head on Eve’s knee. “If you want to know for sure if it’s right.”

“How?”

Crawly did his shrug-wiggle again, going for as much nonchalance as possible. “There’s a Tree here in the Garden. Lots of answers in that Tree.”

Eve’s eyes widened. “Not… you can’t be suggesting that I actually…”

“What could it hurt?” _Everything_.

“God told us not to. Specifically. Specifically told us not to eat from that Tree.”

Crawly made a scoffing noise to cover up the sound of a sob. “What’s the worst that could happen? You learn how to tell the difference between Good and Evil, yeah? Wouldn’t that just make it easier to choose Good?”

Eve was chewing on her lip so hard that she was drawing blood. “Maybe.”

“I’ll go with you, if you like,” Crawly offered. “Moral support.”

Sweet Someone, the fucking irony in that statement. Moral support so that humans could discover what it even meant to _have_ morals.

The lip-gnawing stopped, and Eve held her arm out to Crawly.

“You’ll come along?”

“Yes.” Crawly slid up the length of Eve’s arm and wrapped himself around her shoulders. “Always.”

She smiled at him, not knowing how true that was. He’d be with her always, in a way. His influence. His temptation of her. She’d never be rid of it, and neither would her sons or daughters, and neither would their sons and daughters.

Always, indeed.

When they reached the Tree, Crawly disentangled himself from around Eve’s shoulders and slithered into the Tree.

“It’s alright,” he lied. “Don’t worry.”

He turned away when he felt the branch shake where she’d separated a piece of fruit from the Tree. He didn’t want to watch her commit mankind’s first sin. He’d made it happen, and he felt sick over it.

Any other demon would have stayed, would have relished in the horror that took over Eve’s face when realized what she’d done. Any other demon would have reveled in the way she walked through the garden until she found her husband and convinced him to take a bite, too. Any other demon would have rejoiced in a job well done and made their way back to Hell at their first chance. Any other demon would have been a conscience-less, cruel, heartless thing because choosing that was easier than living with the pain of lost Love day after day.

But Crawly wasn’t any other demon. He was himself, and he’d never given up his conscience, and now he was paying for that decision. He had cared for Eve, truly _cared_ for her, and yet he had still ruined her.

Once, he hadn’t really so much Fallen as been pushed out of Heaven by someone he trusted. He’d hated Michael for that ever since, and he’d never understood how someone could do a thing like that. But now he understood, because he’d done the same thing.

Eve might have stayed in the Almighty’s favor were it not for him. She might not have ever taken the fruit. She asked questions, sure, but she might not have fallen from grace if Crawly hadn’t (with words instead of swords and hands) pushed her.

Crawly stayed hidden in the branches of the Tree for a while longer, and for the second time that day, he let himself cry. If only he was normal, like the others, he wouldn’t feel remorse for this. If he had just been like the others, if he’d decided to cast aside his grief and replace it with evildoing and paperwork, then he wouldn’t feel like this.

But he couldn’t do that. He’d tried, once, to forget about Heaven and immerse himself in planning the downfall of a thing called “humans,” which were the Almighty’s newest creation. He’d done his best to put the memories of having Love and making the stars and kissing Aziraphale (and oh, how those filled every silent space in his head) out of his mind, but he’d failed.

Crawly had realized that there was some very sadistic and lovesick part of him that didn’t want to forget what it felt like to kiss Aziraphale. He didn’t want to not remember the way his hands fit on the curve of Azriaphale’s hips like they were built to stay there. He didn’t want to not think about the little happy hums that Aziraphale would push against his lips. He didn’t want to go a single day without thinking about the way Aziraphale’s countless “I love you”s sounded when they hung the air. He might never see Aziraphale again, but he had his memories, and he was going to cling to them until every single one of the stars he’d built had burned to nothing.

So, Crawly had kept his compassion, and with it, he’d kept his own knowledge of what was Good and what was Evil, and he was crying because it _burned_. It burned to gain Eve’s trust with the foreknowledge that he was only doing it so that he could destroy her relationship with the Almighty. It burned to know that she and Adam and their unborn child would be sent out into a world that was in some ways harsher than Hell because of something that he had done out of a misguided sense of self-preservation.

_Coward,_ Crawly snarled at himself inside of his mind. _You could have saved her. You didn’t have to make her Fall, too, you worthless fucking worm._

But there was no taking it back, not now. There was nothing that he could do to make her un-eat the fruit she’d eaten at his recommendation. He couldn’t take the knowledge of Good and Evil out of her head, and he most certainly couldn’t plead with the Almighty to let her stay in the Garden. He’d done it, really done it, and now he had to have hope that somehow, she could be strong enough to choose to live in the light again. He hadn’t had that choice, but he’d been told that the humans would. Something called “free will,” and something else called “forgiveness.”

One choice wouldn’t damn Eve forever. One choice wouldn’t damn _anyone_ forever, not anymore. That wasn’t the way that this new Earth worked, apparently.

Eve’s voice shook Crawly out of his thoughts, and he moved to the end of a sturdy branch, poking his head out from between the leaves. Adam and Eve were standing together, dressed in makeshift undergarments woven from vines, and they were whispering and staring at a thing that had not been there when Crawly had gone into the Tree.

A hole had appeared in the wall, just tall and wide enough for two sin-filled beings to slip out of. The message was clear enough, but the humans looked terrified.

Crawly didn’t think before he moved. He should have, but he didn’t. Eve was crying, and he wanted to help. That was his only concern, his only thought, and he had wound his body down the trunk of the Tree and was headed for Eve’s feet before he could think twice about it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Crawly knew that he was - at a very basic, essential level - Evil. He could feel it, sometimes, the pull toward hatred and violence and the desire to run from anything beautiful. It was there in the tingles at the base of his spine, there in the moments where he got impatient too quickly and saw red. His Evilness was part of what made him _him_, now. It had just come with the territory of being one of the Fallen, like the universe’s most awful bonus feature.

What _hadn’t_ occurred to Crawly was that Adam and Eve could tell the difference, now, between Evil and not Evil. In other words, they would know what he was just by looking at him.

Crawly had felt immense pain before, yes, and he’d thought it would know what it would feel like to say goodbye to Eve. She’d become a sort of friend, and through a series of events that were entirely his fault, he’d lost her. He’d known that it would be difficult, and he’d been feeling guilty about it from the first day that he changed the shape of the Garden to give Eve some time away from her husband. He’d already wept over it, in fact, and so he’d thought that the worst of the pain was done.

He was wrong.

Nothing could have prepared Crawly for the way that Eve looked at him as he made his way toward her. She saw him, saw his Evil, and let out a sort of strangled whimper.

“Serpent.” She spat it at him, the word landing with a thud at her bare feet. “I suppose it’s my turn to congratulate you, now.”

“I suppose it is,” Crawly said with a coolness that he didn’t feel. He bowed his head to her slightly, flicked his tongue at Adam, and moved towards the nearest shaded grove of trees without so much as a goodbye. It wasn’t worth trying to explain. Eve hated him for good reason, so Crawly thought that it was best to just leave things at that. He would be the enemy of mankind, just as Hell had wanted him to be.

Crawly hadn’t even made it four feet into the shade when he felt the world shift in a way that he knew painfully well. An angel had arrived, was _here_, just a few feet away.

And then a soft voice said, “Hello, my dears,” and Crawly’s blood froze in his veins.

_Oh, very funny,_ Crawly thought in the general direction of the Almighty (which, if he was in any way in control of his mental faculties, he’d have realized actually qualified as a prayer). _Very good, yes. Funny. Throw him in my face, why don’t you? Dangle him in front of me._

“You should take this,” Aziraphale said, and Crawly’s body started turning of its own accord. He didn’t want to see, but he needed to. Needed to make sure that he was right.

He was. Aziraphale was standing barefoot and white-gowned in the Garden, his wings hidden from sight for fear of scaring the humans, and he was pressing his flaming sword into Adam’s stunned hands with an unprecedented urgency. Aziraphale was here, and Aziraphale was giving his sword to the humans. He was protecting them from something Crawly had done, and he was _real_ and _solid_ and _beautiful_.

Aziraphale was more beautiful than Crawly’s memories could do justice to. His white curls were fluffy and mussed by the wind, and his blue eyes were wide with pity and love. His soft cheeks were still pink, and his soft mouth was turned down slightly into something like a frown.

Adam had opened his mouth to say something, but Aziraphale cut him off.

“Don’t thank me. And _don’t_ let the sun go down on you here.”

So, with Azirpahale’s sword in one hand and Eve’s hand in the other, Adam left the Garden. He was looking straight ahead, jaw set in determination.

Eve looked back, though. Just once, and just for a fraction of a second, but Crawly saw her. She looked at the place where Crawly had disappeared into the darkness, and a new flicker of sadness crossed over her features. It was the last Crawly would see of her, and it would haunt his nightmares for millennia to come.

Aziraphale started talking to himself, muttering under his breath just as he’d always done in Heaven when he was late for an assignment or disappointed in the way Gabriel had chosen to deliver a message from the Almighty.

“‘Go guard the Eastern Gate, Aziraphale.’ ‘Go look after the humans, Aziraphale.’ ‘Take your sword with you, Aziraphale.’ ‘Stand against Evil, Aziraphale.’” Thick fingers buried themselves in tangled curls. “Can’t even do _this_ right.”

He was beautiful even in his stress, and Crawly was just as much in love with him as he had ever been. It had been so long since Crawly had seen Aziraphale, and the sight of him made Crawly feel simultaneously like had just been taught how to breathe and had drawn his last breath. It hurt so much to see him, but Crawly couldn’t turn his eyes away.

Time had yet to be invented when they’d last spoken. When Crawly had last kissed Aziraphale, they’d both been in Heaven, and Aziraphale had whispered “I love you” against his lips.

The last time that Aziraphale had seen him, Crawly realized as his racing heart collapsed with a sickening squelch, Aziraphale had known his name. He wouldn’t anymore.

Crawly was agonizing over whether or not to approach Aziraphale when the air shifted again and the newly-swordless angel vanished, leaving Crawly alone in the Garden.

It was the absence of Aziraphale that made up Crawly’s mind about things. Crawly knew that he had to try to talk to Aziraphale, had to convince him that even though he was a demon now, his love hadn’t changed. He could tell Aziraphale his new name, or he could let Aziraphale give him a new one (another name in an increasingly long list, but the only one he’d care at all about), or Aziraphale could call him nothing at all and just kiss him. Aziraphale had loved him in Heaven, loved him with a love that was eternal and unbreakable, and Crawly found himself hopeful that Aziraphale would love him like that again in spite of everything.

The Eastern Gate, Aziraphale had said. Crawly knew where it was, of course; he’d been in the Garden too long to not know the layout of things. He’d never been up to the top, but that was where Aziraphale would be, so that was where Crawly was going.

The other problem was this whole being-a-snake business. Aziraphale had known him as he’d been when he was StarMaker, a skinny archangel with red hair and a shy smile and clusters of golden stars on his skin (“freckles,” they’d been called, but Aziraphale had always called them stars). Crawly looked nothing like that, now. He was scale-covered, and all of the gold that had been on his skin had melted into his eyes and become something horrifying. Crawly wasn’t anything like StarMaker had been. He had all of StarMaker’s memories, yes, and all of StarMaker’s feelings, but all of that had been damned to Hell and shoved into the wrong body.

Somehow, though, Crawly found himself thinking that he could change the way he looked. He’d wanted to before, but he’d never quite known how. Now, though, something inside him told him that he could do it if he wanted to. He knew what he used to look like, and he could recreate it. Remake himself, make himself into something better, all for the love of Aziraphale.

Crawly stayed a snake as he slithered up the wall, pressing his strong body into the cracks between the stones. As he climbed higher, his imagination took control of his mind and painted the walls of his brain with fantasies of reunion kisses and whispered love confessions. Dreams, yes, but ones that could shortly become reality. It was another chance to love Aziraphale and be loved by Aziraphale, and Crawly wasn’t about to lose that again.

Crawly put his chin onto the top of the wall and hauled himself up a bit, and then he concentrated on StarMaker. Red hair, thin body, golden freckles, shy smile, gentle fingers, bones full of stardust. Mostly, though, Crawly thought of how much he loved Aziraphale, and he focused his energy on becoming the being Aziraphale had loved all of those timeless ages ago.

To Crawly’s immense surprise, it worked (mostly). He had arms and hands and legs and feet, and he could feel his old auburn ringlets come to rest on his shoulders. It was perfect, almost. He was StarMaker again, nearly.

It took Crawly a quarter of a section to notice that the light from the sun was still bothering his eyes as much in the same way that it had since the first day he’d slithered into the Garden. It took him another half of a second to see that the stars on his skin were a sort of brownish-red rather than gold, and it was immediately after that that he realized what these things meant.

He couldn’t be StarMaker again because he _wasn’t_ StarMaker anymore. He was a snake, a creepy crawling squirming-at-your-feet-ish thing that had been thrown out of Heaven with one body and landed in Hell in quite another. So, as a reminder of what he wasn’t, his eyes had stayed the same. Still yellow and sliced into halves by a shard of black, still horrible.

But it was close enough. Aziraphale would recognize him like this, and maybe he could love him like this. It was enough.

With a tiny smirk playing at the corner of his new mouth, Crawly decided to go for humor. In Heaven, he’d loved making Aziraphale laugh, and that would probably be a good way to start things again.

“Well, that went down like a lead balloon,” Crawly said in StarMaker’s smooth voice, and then he waited.

He thought that Aziraphale would freeze at the sound of his voice like he had done at the sound of Aziraphale’s. Part of him had hoped that Aziraphale would just turn to him and hold him, wrap his skinny body up with strong arms and softness. He’d even considered that Aziraphale would be angry with him; it was his least favorite potential reaction, but it was a possibility. He’d Fallen, after all, and he’d left Aziraphale behind. Aziraphale had a right to be angry about that.

What Crawly had not expected was that Aziraphale would look at him like he’d never seen him before, laugh a little, and say, “I’m sorry, what was that?”

Crawly nearly fell off of the wall. Aziraphale, _his_ Aziraphale, the love of his life and the actor in his dreams, had no idea who he was.

It wasn’t just his name that Aziraphale had forgotten. Crawly had been prepared for that. No, it was him, all of him. There was no recognition in Aziraphale’s clear blue eyes, no familiarity in his laugh, and Crawly’s newly human-ish-shaped heart crumpled. In an instant, his hopes of kisses and warm embraces and renewed vows of “I love you, I’ll never not love you” turned to ash and smoke that filled his throat.

In the space of an hour, Crawly had been burned twice by his own idiotic belief that holding onto a love he’d lost was worth anything at all.

Crawly became aware that he was saying something, but he wasn’t quite sure what exactly it was. It was probably something idiotic, something to keep Aziraphale talking until he figured out what to do.

And then Aziraphale asked his name, and it was time for a decision.

_StarMaker,_ Crawly thought in a moment of desperation. _Your love._

But that wouldn’t do, not if Aziraphale didn’t remember him. He was a demon, and Aziraphale was an angel. They were meant to be enemies, now, but Crawly wouldn’t stand for that, either. He’d already lost Aziraphale once, and he had no intention of doing it again.

He’d make this Aziraphale into his friend, and he’d finally be able to mourn the loss of the Aziraphale who had loved him.

So, Crawly forced a smile onto his face and said, “Crawly.”

Aziraphale repeated it back to him, and the Hell-born word sounded all sorts of wrong in that musical voice, but Crawly accepted it for the moment. Maybe someday he could change it, give _himself_ a name, and then he could ask Aziraphale to call him that instead.

Aziraphale looked him in his terrible eyes and said a name that wasn’t really his, and in spite of everything, Crawly fell in love with him all over again.


	3. Mesopotamia, Sometime After Eden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stargazing, memories, and the first version of the Arrangement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! 
> 
> Sorry for the long wait on this chapter - I've been trying to write ahead, but Chapter Three gave me a headache for TEN DAYS until I finally found a version I'm happy with. Also, here's an update on how posting is going to go for the next little while: I'm going to try to post a new chapter every Sunday for the next few weeks in order to give myself time to stay ahead (life is chaotic, but what can you do?). I'll let you know if anything changes with this, but let's call it a plan for now! 
> 
> The majority of this story is gonna be pretty sad, but there will be some attempts at humor and some happy moments as often as I can manage. And of course (you'll know this if you've ever read anything else I've written), I can promise you that it will have a happy ending. 
> 
> Comments are my absolute favorite thing, so if you feel like leaving one, I'll love you forever! Thanks for taking the time to read this fic, and I hope you have a lovely week!

There had been a lot of trees in the Garden, and Crawly hadn’t realized just how nice they’d been until he didn’t have them anymore. The trees had been full and tall, and they’d blocked the sky from view most of the time.

Crawly had known that the stars were _there_, of course, but the trees had made it so that he couldn’t see them. He hadn’t gone looking for them because he hadn’t _wanted_ to see them, but now he had no choice but to look at them. They were just there, twinkling and shining and mocking him, scattered across the darkness like pinholes in black fabric. They were ever-present and permanent, and they would be a part of Crawly’s life on Earth forever.

He remembered making each and every one of them. Small ones that burned bright and hot, large ones with slower burns and dimmer glows, and a million billion ones of every gradation of size and heat in between. He’d named them, sometimes, with little clicks of his tongue and hums in the back of his throat, because he’d loved them. He had carved a spot in the nothing-dark-absence of space for each one of them, and the location of each one was seared into his mind.

And because he had loved them so much, loved them with all of himself, he had made them indestructible. They would grow, live, and die, and then they would start growing again. It would take some time, but eventually, they would come back. They might look different, might be a smaller shape, but they would still be there. Invincible, eternal, forever.

Crawly had once loved the stars with his entire self, but he had been someone else back then. Now, things were different. _He_ was different. So he hated them, and he hated himself for designing them to resurrect. They were beautiful reminders of everything he’d left behind, everything he didn’t have anymore, and they would keep on being that way until the Earth died and space ceased to exist.

There was one star (well, it was two, but you couldn’t see that from down here) in particular that was more painful than the others, because he’d made it for Aziraphale. It was a clear night, and that particular binary star seemed to be brighter than it should have been, so Crawly closed his eyes and laid down against the rocks.

He didn’t want to see the stars anymore. He remembered well enough on his own, and he didn’t need the stars to remind him.

When Crawly had been StarMaker, he had taken every opportunity to bring Aziraphale up to his perch on the edge of space. He did it because he loved Aziraphale, and Aziraphale had always loved to watch him make the stars.

Some part of StarMaker had expected that Aziraphale would become less interested in the whole star-making business once they had fallen in love, but that hadn’t happened. If anything, Aziraphle seemed to love it more, so StarMaker usually brought him along more often than not.

Sometimes, Aziraphale would get curious, and he would distract StarMaker with a ceaseless stream of questions about how it all worked, and StarMaker would do his best to answer. A few times, Aziraphale had helped him find places for the brand-new stars to rest, and after those stars had settled into the space-wells StarMaker had dug for them, Aziraphale would kiss StarMaker and call him wonderful.

Other times they sat in silence, and StarMaker would look down at the love of his life every so often just to see the way that he was staring at the stars, and he would fall a little more in love every single time. His love was beautiful, the _most_ beautiful, and when he was happy, he became even more so. Beauty beyond description, beyond fathoming, beyond understanding - that was Aziraphale.

Inevitably, though, they would leave the star nursery (usually when StarMaker got tired or Aziraphale got hungry) and re-enter the noise and camaraderie of Heaven. They would always walk down together from StarMaker’s place in the sky, thin fingers locked between heavier ones, taking moments to themselves and basking in the warmth of each others’s affectionate glances and star-warmed skin.

Crawly remembered every walk, every shift of Aziraphale’s hand in his, every single lilting laugh and bright smile. They were all pieces of an impossible puzzle, answers to questions that Aziraphale would never ask (and ones that Crawly wouldn’t answer even if he did). But that two-in-one star had been a special one, and seeing it from his post on Earth had thrown a knife into Crawly’s gut and twisted it.

He remembered everything, but he remembered the day he’d made those stars so clearly that he could almost taste the acrid heat of his corner of Heaven.

Like usual, Aziraphale had been sitting next to him, cross-legged and looking up in fascination as the sparks of burning gas threw golden reflections into the blue of his eyes. He’d been watching carefully, his soft mouth fallen open in awe, and StarMaker had gotten so caught up in his beauty that he’d forgotten to pay attention to his hands.

StarMaker didn’t burn himself often, but sometimes, it happened. That had been the first time Aziraphale had seen it, though, and the joy on his face had contorted into fear and concern almost before the pain had registered in StarMaker’s brain.

Aziraphale had scrambled to his feet and reached for StarMaker’s wounded hand in an instant, wrapping his gentle fingers around StarMaker’s golden-freckle-covered wrist. The burn had been miracled away before the blisters had even formed, leaving a swath of skin that was pink from healing instead of burning. And then Aziraphale had kissed him, had wrapped his strong arms around StarMaker’s neck and pressed his plush body against the flat planes of StarMaker’s chest, and he’d kissed StarMaker like he’d been worried that he would lose him.

He’d fussed for a while longer, and StarMaker had grinned at him and reassured him that it was just a little burn, that it happened all the time, that he was okay. Aziraphale had eventually pulled away, sitting back down at StarMaker’s feet. But he was closer than he had been before, and StarMaker almost dropped his new strands of starstuff when a warm arm had slipped around his lower leg. Aziraphale was holding him, the only part of him that he could touch, and he was still shaking.

So StarMaker had thrown his not-yet-stars back out into the space in front of him, and he’d said that he was never going to leave. He’d promised. And then he’d drawn in a hundred tiny golden strands of flaming hydrogen and helium, and he’d shown Aziraphale that he was still there and still able to do what he’d been made to do. He’d made two stars, one with each hand, and then he’d tied them together.

He put them in the palm of one hand and reached for Aziraphale with the other, pulling his love to his feet and crushing him into his side. He’d started to spin his new stars in slow circles with careful movements of his wrist, staring at the patch of skin that Aziraphale had healed. It wouldn’t be normal again, wouldn’t ever grow hair or be spotted with gold freckles, but it would be a mark of Aziraphale’s love for him, and that was much better than normal.

They had been standing on the edge of Heaven when StarMaker had nuzzled his nose into Aziraphale’s static-fluffy curls and explained that these stars were for Azirapahle. They were a never-ending reminder of this thing they had, this kind of divinely orchestrated love of the ages-that-didn’t-yet-exist. A reminder of not leaving, a reminder of together.

Aziraphale had helped him pick a spot in the sky for his stars, and when StarMaker had put them there, Aziraphale had kissed him. Kissed him and told him that he loved him desperately, infinitely, completely. He’d said that he thought he’d been born to love StarMaker, and StarMaker had called him ridiculous, but Aziraphale had said it again anyway.

That had been a lifetime ago, but the stars that he’d made for Aziraphale were still burning bright. Crawly hated that they would be there, shining above his head every single night for his entire fuck-knows-how-long tenure as Resident Demon on this blessed Earth. They were a broken mirror’s reflection of a thing that had once been his, of a love he’d lost.

The worst part of it, though, was that Aziraphale could see them, too. They hung in the darkness above him just as they did Crawly, but Crawly couldn’t be sure that Aziraphale knew they were for him. He couldn’t know whether Aziraphale remembered anything before the Fall, and he had no way of finding out. The Aziraphale who was here on Earth with him, the one who was Satan-knows-where right now, might not know that any of the stars in the sky were built out of love for him.

Crawly could tell him, maybe, but what good would that do? _Oh, by the way, we knew each other in Heaven. I loved you - no, I **love** you, present tense - and because I didn’t have a better way of showing it, I made you a pair of stars. You were always the one who was good with words. I was never good enough with them, but I could create something beautiful for you, so I did. I can show you, point them out, if you want._

No. No, that wouldn’t do. There had been an Aziraphale who had loved him, but that Aziraphale had been lost to him in the Fall. If he tried to tell this Aziraphale about it, if he tried to explain how every beat of his pathetic heart sent aches of lost love shooting through his whole body, Aziraphale would think that he was lying.

Crawly was Fallen, and one of the things that the Fallen had become good at doing was lying. Crawly himself had never been much of a liar, but Aziraphale wouldn’t know that. It would seem like a trick, like some elaborate scheme to get Aziraphale to Fall, and Crawly couldn’t have him thinking that. He wanted to be friends with Aziraphale, wanted to have him around, and he knew that Aziraphale wouldn’t befriend anyone who he believed was lying to him.

If friendship was the best he could do, then he was going to put his whole damned soul into making it happen, and he couldn’t do that by telling a truth that would never not sound like a lie.

Lying on his back on a rough slab of cold stone, Crawly made himself open his eyes again. Aziraphale’s binary stars winked at him viciously, and Crawly realized the irony of his situation: he didn’t want Aziraphale to think he was a liar, but he’d have to lie to maintain a facade of honesty.

Crawly was a terrible liar, but it looked like he’d have to get good at it. If he wanted Aziraphale in his life, he’d have to become the best liar in the world.

_No, I didn’t know you._

_No, I haven’t been missing you since the moment I lost you._

_No, I don’t love you. I never have._

Lies, but ones he needed to learn how to tell. He might not need to know how to say those words with his mouth, necessarily, because Aziraphale might never ask those exact questions, but he’d have to tell those lies with his body. He couldn’t get too close, couldn’t reach for Aziraphale’s hand, couldn’t look at him like he loved him. He couldn’t slip up, ever, because it would cost him Aziraphale, and Crawly didn’t think that he could handle losing him twice.

It was a new mission, then: Learn how to tell a lie and make it sound like the truth. Be Aziraphale’s friend, but lie to him every single moment of every single day to do it.

That, Crawly thought with a cruel smile, sounded a little bit more demonic than anything he’d ever done. The greater the irony, though, because Crawly was only going to do it because he loved Aziraphale, which was decidedly undemonic of him.

Above his head, the stars he had once brought into existence flickered against the dark, and Crawly could almost hear them laughing.

“Shut up,” he growled at them, and he closed his eyes again.

When he dreamed, it was a memory of Aziraphale laughing with stardust in his hair.

*********

Crawly had thought that he would find Aziraphale eventually. He’d planned to give himself a few years to get himself in order, to learn how to lie and to do a few temptations on Adam and Eve’s descendants. Then, when he was ready, he would go searching for a certain not-quite-man, and he’d start working on getting Aziraphale to see him as something other than an enemy.

This is not how things happened.

When Aziraphale found him, it hadn’t even been a year since the night he’d stretched out on a rock and actively hated the stars. There was a village nearby, and Crawly had decided to give himself a night off from the minor temptations he was doing to the residents of said village (helping a kid steal from another kid, making a man _look_ at a woman who wasn’t his wife, encouraging a young bride-to-be to run away from her violent asshole of a future-husband). He had gone for a walk to clear his head and had wound up sitting in the middle of a field, which is where he was when Aziraphale walked up behind him.

“Hello.”

Crawly nearly jumped out of his skin (which was turning to scales in patches - it did that whenever he got too distracted to remember how to look human), but he gathered himself quickly enough to say, “Hi.”

“Can I...?” Aziraphale gestured to the spot next to Crawly, and Crawly shrugged in an effort to appear nonchalant despite the fact that his wretched heart was racing.

“If you want.”

Aziraphale was silent for a while, twisting the golden ring that had encircled his pinky finger for as long as Crawly could remember. It was a nervous habit of his, one he’d had since Heaven, but Crawly wasn’t supposed to know that. He definitely wasn’t supposed to offer to help, either, so he just sat and waited for Aziraphale to come out with whatever-it-was that had made him follow Crawly into a dark field in the middle of the night.

“Nice night, isn’t it?”

Crawly nearly laughed at the calm politeness of that statement. Even to an enemy, Aziraphale was courteous and sociable. “S’pose so.”

“The people here are lovely.”

“Are they?” Crawly asked. “Hadn’t noticed.”

He had, of course, but any other demon wouldn’t have, and _oh_. That was his first lie to Aziraphale.

“Very kind,” Aziraphale said, and then he made a happy humming sound that Crawly had heard a thousand times before, and Crawly’s stomach lurched into his chest. “Been here long, yet?”

“Few days.” Not a lie, exactly. A few days in this village, a few hundred in others near here.

“Ah.”

“You?”

“Arrived today. Blessing a woman who’s going to have a very difficult pregnancy.”

“Mmm,” Crawly said, casting a sideways glance in Aziraphale’s direction. His brows were pinched together - _worried_, Crawly knew instantly - and he was spinning the ring around his finger with such force that Crawly was surprised that he hadn’t cut his skin with the edge of it. “She okay?”

“For now.”

“Ah.”

“They didn’t tell me that she’ll survive,” Aziraphale said, words coming out of his mouth all in a rush. “They’ve told me, before. You know, ‘Go bless this young lady who’s sick, you’ll make her better,’ or ‘Go kiss the forehead of this young boy whose mother has died, you’ll bring him peace,’ but not with this one. Just a cursory ‘Go bless this pregnant mother and her unborn child, it’s going to be a hard one for them.’”

“Can’t you, just, make it so they both survive?”

Aziraphale looked stricken. “They didn’t ask me to.”

“But couldn’t you?”

A pause, and then a very soft “Yes.”

“But you won’t.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to. I think… well, the Almighty has a plan! It’s just-”

“Ineffable,” Crawly said, recalling the word Aziraphale had said on the wall of the Garden.

A tiny smile spread across Aziraphale’s lips, and Crawly felt like crying. He hadn’t known how much he missed that smile until just now. It was a fraction of the one he had seen in Heaven, of course; it had only a sliver of the warmth and brightness that Aziraphale’s full smile had, but it was genuine, and for now that was enough.

“Yes, precisely. Ineffable.”

“Sometimes bad things happen,” Crawly said, reclining back onto his elbows and turning his head towards Aziraphale.

“I know.”

_Do you?_ Crawly felt the sudden urge to ask. _How many humans have you watched die, then? How many so far? I know you’ve kept track - you were built to love them. It’s got to kill you to lose them, like it killed me to lose the stars and Heaven and you._

But he said, “It’s not fair,” and Aziraphale gave him another little smile, but this time his blue eyes were dark with sadness.

“It isn’t, no.”

Silence fell again, but Aziraphale kept fidgeting with his ring and playing with the seams on his robe, so Crawly waited. There was more, he was sure of it.

“Look,” Aziraphale finally said, bracing his broad hands on his thighs. “I’ve been thinking, and I don’t… I don’t think it’s going to be very nice, living on Earth surrounded by people who never last for more than a few decades.”

Something slimy rose up in Crawly’s throat, but he choked it down. _Oh, fuck, how many of them **have** you lost? How many?_

“So?”

“So,” Aziraphale said with a sniff, “I think we should… see each other, sometimes. Every so often. Just to be around someone with a comparable life span.”

Crawly blinked at him. “You think we should _what_?”

“I don’t get the feeling that you pose a threat to me. You haven’t tried to kill me, and you’ve certainly had the chance.”

Ah, yes. He’d forgotten that one of the things demons wanted to do was kill angels. The thought had literally never crossed his mind, but that might have been because the angel in front of him was one he was in love with and not the one who’d thrown him out of Heaven. Had it been Michael, murder might have been a consideration, but it was Aziraphale, so it hadn’t been.

“Might still kill you,” Crawly said, attempting to inject as much malice and venom into it as possible and failing spectacularly. “Y’never know.”

“I don’t think you will.”

“Mph,” Crawly huffed, but he gave up on arguing. Killing Aziraphale was never going to be a possibility, so he might as well stop pretending that it could be.

“Anyway. I think it might be good to interact with another immortal every once in a while. Wouldn’t be so lonely, that way, I don’t think.”

Crawly couldn’t believe that he was hearing this. He’d thought that he’d have to beg and plead to get Aziraphale to spend time around him, had thought that it would take centuries of gradual I’m-not-your-enemy proving. But no, Aziraphale was sitting with him in an empty field, staring at him in a way that was neither friendly nor hateful, and he was asking to keep doing things like this on a regular basis.

“Umnh,” Crawly said. “Yeah, ‘kay. Sure.”

He almost fainted at the sight of Aziraphale’s answering smile. It still wasn’t quite the way Crawly remembered it, but it was close. Close enough that Crawly felt like he’d go blind if he kept looking at it, so he turned his head back toward the darkness in front of him.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, and then they fell back into a quiet that was easier than it should have been.

_He should hate me,_ Crawly thought, daring to take another glance at Aziraphale, who was - fuck, holy fuck - smiling gently at the stars. _He should have tried to kill me from the moment I spoke to him on the wall. He should hate me by natural law, but he doesn’t._

Crawly had a somewhat happy six seconds with this thought before he sabotaged himself by thinking a very stupid thing.

_Maybe he remembers loving me, even if he doesn’t know that he remembers. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t hate me._

But no. Aziraphale had just said why, hadn’t he? Crawly was the closest thing he had to another angel, and it was down to a similarity in lifespan. If there was another immortal walking around, Aziraphale would have made the same proposal to them. He only didn’t hate Crawly because he had presumably lost the humans that he’d allowed himself to care about, and he thought that the occasional chat with Crawly could help him not feel quite so alone.

“It really _is _a nice night,” Aziraphale said after a while, soft voice almost lost in the rising wind.

“Mmhm,” Crawly agreed.

And then Aziraphale said something that hit Crawly’s chest like an ice pick to the sternum, and Crawly forgot that he knew how to breathe.

“I love the stars, don’t you?”

Memories flashed through Crawly’s shell-shocked brain in a chaotic stream of light and color and not-real-touches. Taking Aziraphale’s hand on the stairs down from the place where he used to make the stars, kissing Aziraphale in the light of a star he’d not quite finished forming, watching his new stars settle into place with Aziraphale by his side. Hating the stars for still burning even though he was gone, hating himself for making them, hating himself for hating them.

Of course Aziraphale would still love the stars. Of course he would, because he always had, and StarMaker falling from Heaven wouldn’t have changed that.

So Crawly bit down on his lower lip so hard that it started to bleed, and he said, “Not really. Seem a bit pointless, really, to me.”

“They don’t have to have a point! They’re just… beautiful. Beauty for the sake of beauty.”

“Ngk,” Crawly said, and he chewed on his lip a bit more, tasting metal on his tongue.

Aziraphale sighed, his whole soft body shaking with the force of it. “I hope you grow to like them, one day. They’re very nice.”

“I’m a demon,” Crawly spat, spiraling into anger in spite of his attempts to stop it. It came quicker now, after the Fall, and he hated himself for it. “Demons don’t deserve nice things.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely true,” Aziraphale said. “No one says that you can’t like beautiful things just because you’re Fallen.”

_No one except everyone in Heaven and Hell,_ Crawly thought. _Every single fucking angel and demon except for you, you absolutely wonderful idiot._

“Hmm,” Crawly grunted. “Whatever, angel.”

It had been intended as an insult, sort of (or it would have been if Crawly had been any demon but the one he was), but Aziraphale brightened at the sound of it anyway.

They didn’t say anything more after that until after the stars had ceded their reign over the sky to the colors of the rising sun.

“Well then,” Aziraphale said, sitting up from where he’d slid down to lie on his back a few hours earlier. “Until next time, Crawly.”

There were pieces of grass in his hair, and his curls were smashed at strange angles, but he was beautiful, and Crawly loved him.

“Bye, Aziraphale.”

It wasn’t until the angel was out of sight that Crawly realized that Aziraphale had never actually introduced himself.

“Well,” he said, shoving his long fingers into the pockets in his robe (which hadn’t been there until he’d decided just then that he’d wanted them to be), “fuck.”


	4. The Ark, 3004 BC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An angel and a demon keep each other company on the ark. There is always wine, usually food, and on one occasion, a very important conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good morning/afternoon/evening, lovelies! 
> 
> So, I've had just about the most chaotic week of my entire life, and I wasn't able to write much at all. This chapter is basically the most recent thing I've written, and this next week is chaos until I have a couple days off of work for Thanksgiving, which will be busy in and of itself. Basically: there might not be a chapter next Sunday, depending on whether or not I have time to do some serious word-typing this week. So sorry for the extreme fluctuation in schedule! I'll be posting an update on this to my [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hopeinthedark1901) this week, and I'll try to remember to update this chapter with an end note as well so that y'all know what's going on! 
> 
> Anyway. This chapter gave me a headache for a solid ten days, but I think I've got it to a suitable point. As always, kudos and comments mean the absolute world to me! 
> 
> Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful week!

“Hello,” Aziraphale said from over Crawly’s shoulder.

Crawly turned to look at him, blinking rainwater out of his eyes. “Hi.”

“Might I join you?” They’d done this a few times, now, but Aziraphale still asked. He’d always been too polite for his own good, always been the one to give everyone else a way out. Every time they’d met, Aziraphale had asked permission to sit down, or to join him at a table, or to stand next to him in a crowd. Every time, he’d given Crawly the chance to say no, to tell him to bugger off, to take back his agreement to these meetings.

Crawly never had, and he never would, but Aziraphale didn’t know that.

So, like he always did, Crawly gave an agreeable sounding grunt and patted the wet patch of wood beside him.

Gingerly, Aziraphale sat, swinging his legs over the edge just as Crawly had done. Despite the fact that it was raining, Aziraphale was perfectly dry; his white curls were as fluffy as they always had been, and the thin white robes that should have turned into an entry in the world’s first wet t-shirt contest were still creased from where he had folded them.

Crawly sighed to cover up a smile. Even back in Heaven, Aziraphale had been more than a bit fussy about his comfort, so it made sense that he would be performing a continuous miracle to keep himself dry. He probably didn’t think that it was ridiculous at all, but it was, and Crawly loved him for it.

Aziraphale was staring out at the vast expanse of ocean that stretched out to the horizon, and even in the dim stormlight, Crawly could see the turned-down corners of his mouth and the navy blue sadness in his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to reach for him, to pull that warm body close against his own, to press his lips to the spot behind Aziraphale’s ear that he knew caused Aziraphale to shiver. He wanted to hold Aziraphale and let him cry, wanted to offer him comfort and tell him that they’d known each other in Heaven, tell him that they’d been in love and that he’d never, not for one moment, stopped loving him.

But that wasn’t an option. It wouldn’t ever be an option, so Crawly shoved the hand nearest to Aziraphale into his soaked pocket, and he pried his eyes away from Aziraphale’s sadness-softened face.

“I have wine,” Crawly said after a moment, reaching for the small wineskin that he’d been drinking from and miraculously refilling for days.

“Oh?”

“It helps.” This wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. It was easier to not think about the bodies that were sinking into the waves when one had a bit to drink, but it didn’t really make the knowledge go away. Just sort of numbed it for a while.

Aziraphale, apparently, needed a good numbing, because he snatched the wineskin from Crawly’s thin fingers as soon as it was within reach. Without meeting Crawly’s eyes, he drained the contents in a few large gulps, refilled it, and took another swig.

Crawly blinked at him. “You alright?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, still staring out at the endless grey water. “I’m really not.”

“Oh?”

“They said things would be different after the Fall,” Azirapahle spat, hands fisting in his robes. He was looking down at his feet, now, the muscles in his jaw clenched so tightly that Crawly could almost hear his teeth squeaking as they ground together. “They said the humans were different than us.”

“I know,” Crawly said softly. He’d thought that all of that free-will-and-forgiveness stuff was a guarantee that Heaven had changed its approach to dealing with those who went against the will of the Almighty, but this flood had proved him wrong. Apparently, the bastards in charge of Heaven’s policymaking were still of the belief that sometimes, forgiveness stops being an option.

It wasn’t really the Almighty’s speed, though, this sort of thing. It, like the Fall, seemed more like a Gabriel-and-Michael decision, and Crawly suspected that that was exactly what it was. It was too cruel, too angry, too Loveless to be the Almighty’s doing.

He just wondered why the Almighty was allowing it to happen _again._

_“Seems like the sort of thing you’d expect my lot to do,”_ he’d said a few days earlier, standing with Aziraphale in the shadow of the same ark that they were currently perched on top of.

Aziraphale’s voice had been heavy with the levity of false confidence when he’d explained the flood. When Crawly had asked if Heaven was going to kill the kids, Azirapahle had just nodded, looking away and fidgeting with his hands in a way that Crawly associated with guilt and shame.

He was doing it now, too, so Crawly took a drink from the wineskin (which now contained a much nicer, sweeter wine than it had before - the angel had _taste_, apparently) and passed it back to him.

When Aziraphale took it, his pinky finger brushed the side of Crawly’s hand. It was an impossibly slight touch, so quick and gentle that it almost wasn’t there, but it _was_. Every single nerve ending in Crawly’s entire body lit up with warmth, and Crawly’s cold cheeks went warm.

He knew that he shouldn’t be reacting this way. He knew that it was an idle touch of hands, a tiny little accidental _nothing_, but it was a touch. For the first time since the Fall, Crawly had touched his love, and even though it was the most innocuous and insignificant push of skin-on-skin that had ever happened in Earth’s history, it was the most important thing that had happened to Crawly so far.

Aziraphale didn’t notice that Crawly suddenly looked like he was trying not to pass out because he had busied himself with the task of draining the wineskin for the second time in less than five minutes. Evidently, he had decided that getting completely and utterly shitfaced was the best way to deal with not stopping the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, and Crawly couldn’t really say that he disagreed.

His heart still beating at a rate that would have sent any human into fatal cardiac arrest, Crawly brushed a dripping lock of red hair out of his eyes and fixed Aziraphale with a teasing smirk. “Planning on sharing that?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, choking out something that resembled a laugh inasmuch as ground beef resembles a cow. “How rude of me. Wine, Crawly?”

When Crawly took another pull from his wineskin, he barely tasted it at all. His senses were occupied with the fact that it tasted a bit like Aziraphale’s mouth, and Crawly cared more about that than anything else.

Accidental touches and drinks that tasted like kisses. These were the pieces of his Aziraphale that this Aziraphale had. These little things, these fragments of barely-anything-at-all were what Crawly had been given, and he was going to hold onto them.

**********

Aziraphale came up to the top of the ark every day after that. Sometimes he brought something to eat, and sometimes he brought some wine that he’d taken from Noah’s stores (_“It doesn’t taste the same when you miracle it up, Crawly, you know that”_), and sometimes he came empty-handed. Crawly would say hello to him, and they would sit for hours on the edge of the roof, sharing food or wine or silence until Aziraphale said farewell and disappeared back into the family’s quarters.

They didn’t usually say much to each other. There were the usual formalities, of course, because Aziraphale hadn’t stopped asking permission to sit with Crawly and Crawly hadn’t told him that it was an open invitation (it _was_, but telling an angel that you’d be more than happy to have him come hang out with you whenever he fancied a bit of company was not a particularly demonic thing to do, and Crawly was trying to keep up appearances). Past that, though, they typically didn’t talk. This was primarily because there wasn’t exactly much to say - the place they’d both been calling home for some centuries had been turned into a Heavenly-wrath incited ocean, and none of them really knew what to do about it.

Once, Crawly had asked Aziraphale when Heaven had said the flood would be over.

“Forty days,” Aziraphale had said, which would have been helpful were it not for the fact that the sky had been an impenetrable mass of grey clouds since the rain had started, which made it a bit difficult to tell what time it was at any given moment. So, Crawly had just nodded, and that had been the extent of their conversation for the day.

Another time, Aziraphale had asked why he insisted on staying wet all the time.

“Can’t you miracle yourself dry?”

“Could, yeah.”

“Why don’t you?”

Crawly had rolled his eyes and grabbed a date from the pile that Aziraphale had set down between them. He didn’t really like eating, but it gave his mouth something to do while he came up with a suitable lie.

“Don’t want to attract any unnecessary attention from the bosses,” he’d said, which was a half-truth. He really _didn’t_ want his bosses checking up on him; Beelzebub and Hastur had developed a bad habit of poking their slimy noses into Crawly’s business far more often than he liked (which had only been once each in the almost-millenium he’d been doing this, but that was more than enough), and a forty-day-long continuous miracle was something that would definitely have attracted their attention. It was especially dangerous to even _think_ about pulling something that big in light of the last thing he’d done before he’d snuck on board the ark.

Crawly had figured that if Heaven’s plan was to drown everyone in Mesopotamia, then it was his job as the local Thwarter-of-Heaven’s-Plans to make sure that some people survived. So he’d performed a few dozen major miracles and transported thirty or so children out of the path of the oncoming flood. He’d set them up with various families around the world, erasing their memories of the families they’d left behind and ensuring that their new parents and siblings would treat them as though they’d always been there.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was _a_ solution. Crawly would have saved all of them, if he’d had time, but he hadn’t. Thirty would have to be enough.

Crawly knew that his bosses wouldn’t see his actions as anything remotely evil. They’d gloss over the whole thwarting bit, and they’d just see it as a demon using his Hell-given powers to save innocent human lives, which was not considered to be particularly demonic. Demons liked watching people suffer. Demons took pleasure from the thought that they had caused (or at least hadn’t stopped) pain. Demons thrived on the knowledge that the humans the Almighty had made were fragile and mortal and breakable, and demons liked to break them and cause them to die. Crawly’s bosses expected him to behave this way, and his decision to save a couple dozen children simply because he couldn’t bear to stand by as they drowned was something that could land him in a dark pit for a few centuries if they looked too closely at it.

So Crawly was keeping his head down. No miracles other than the occasional refilling of his wine skin, no bringing his wings into this plane of existence, no mentions of anyone in Hell by name. The more distance that he could put between himself and the miraculous escape of a large-ish number of Mesopotamian children, the better.

Luckily, Aziraphale hadn’t asked him for any further explanation, and Crawly had been more than happy to let that conversation die and go back to watching Aziraphale work his way through the pile of dates.

Now, though, Aziraphale and Crawly had made their way through a semi-acceptable amount of a jug of Noah’s wine and a more-than-acceptable amount of subpar miracled stuff, and Aziraphale was feeling talkative.

“Y’knew me,” Aziraphale said, falling out of the precarious way he’d been propping himself up on his elbows and winding up flat on his back on the roof.

Crawly’s blood ran cold. “Eh?”

“In H’ven,” Aziraphale clarified. He rolled his head to the side, locking his eyes on Crawly’s. He was sloshed - they both were - but there was a kind of certainty in his gaze that really had no business being there. “Before the Fall.”

Briefly, Crawly considered denying it, but it hadn’t been a question. Aziraphale hadn’t said “Did you know me before?” He’d said, “You knew me.”

So Crawly snatched the wineskin from where it had fallen from Aziraphale’s fingers, took a pull, and nodded.

“Did…” Aziraphale stiffened, and the shiny haziness of alcohol in his eyes disappeared. The wineskin became heavy again and overflowed, a steady stream of previously-consumed wine trickling off the edge of the roof and falling into the water below. When Aziraphale spoke again, his sudden sobriety was evident in every non-slurred syllable. “Did I know you, too?”

Crawly flinched. “Mmm.”

_Don’t think about it,_ Crawly told himself, taking shaky breaths that he didn’t need in an effort to stop his heart from pounding out of his chest. _Don’t think about holding him, don’t think about kissing him, don’t think about “I love you” and “forever” and “my darling.”_

The ocean, in all of its great dark nothingness, was easier to look at than Aziraphale, so Crawly turned to face it. His head felt like it had been filled with lead, thoughts blurred and twisted together by a combination of alcohol and shock. At some level, he’d known that his little slip up with Aziraphale’s name a few hundred years ago would come back to bite him in the ass, but he hadn’t been expecting it to happen here. Here, now, looking out across a sea that only existed because the Powers (or rather, Archangels) That Be in Heaven had decided that humanity deserved the same level of mercilessness as the Fallen.

“How _well_ did we know each other, Crawly?”

Crawly’s Hell-inflated temper flared, and he sobered up with a snarl, not caring at all about the flood of wine that cascaded over his robes as it spilled out of the overfilled wineskin. The rain would wash it out soon enough anyway.

“Not that well,” Crawly lied. “Barely at all.”

“Oh.”

Could that have been _disappointment_ in his… no, no. _Don’t think about it._

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“Because I can’t remember,” Aziraphale said slowly. “They said it would be easier this way - forgetting, I mean - but sometimes I wonder if it’s worse.”

“Why?”

Aziraphale sighed. “You’ll probably think it’s silly.”

“Nah,” Crawly said, shrugging when Aziraphale raised a doubtful eyebrow in his direction. “Doubt it.”

“It’s just that… well, I know that I loved some of the ones who Fell, and I wish… I wish I remembered why.”

The air in Crawly’s lungs went stale and disappeared. “You… what?”

“I loved some of them very much,” Aziraphale said, the corners of his words tinged with sadness. “And I don’t remember who they are.”

“Ngh,” Crawly grunted.

“I don’t even think I’d recognize them if I saw any of them again.”

It felt like someone had taken a club to Crawly’s ribs, and his ears rang with the imaginary crunching sound of breaking bones.

_I can tell you that you wouldn’t recognize any of them. Can tell you that for a fact,_ one part of Crawly’s head wanted to say, the acrid bitterness of sarcasm floating around the edges of those thoughts.

Another part wanted to break down and tell that truth that looked and sounded so much like a lie, wanted to take hold of Aziraphale’s soft shoulders and shake him and say_ I lied. We knew each other so well, better than anyone else - I loved you, I **love** you, can’t you try to remember why you loved me back? Can’t we try this again, can’t we start over? My name is Crawly - it wasn’t always, but it is now - and I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since before time existed, and I’ll love you after it’s gone, and once you said the same about me._

But Crawly didn’t say either of those things. Instead, he clenched his hands in the wet folds of his robes, holding on so tightly that his knuckles went white, and said, “That must be hard.”

Aziraphale laughed, a tiny broken-off thing that was devoid of joy. “I appreciate your attempt at empathy, Crawly, but it’s really alright.”

“I…” Okay, so Aziraphale thought that he was only capable of _attempting_ to be empathetic. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Aziraphale said, giving Crawly a small quirk of lips that couldn’t even really be counted as a smile. “If anything,_ I_ should be apologizing to _you_. I didn’t… I don’t know, I wasn’t really planning on bringing it up. Heaven, the Fall - not the most wonderful of topic choices, are they?” He laughed again, still hollow, and Crawly resisted his desire to take one of those beautiful plump hands in his.

“I guess not,” Crawly said with as much nonchalance as he could muster.

“There’s no excuse, really, but it was just…” He trailed off, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his robe.

“Wine,” Crawly finished, and Aziraphale’s cheeks pinkened delicately.

“Yes.”

“It’s… fine, yeah. Fine.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, at least now I know.”

“Know what?”

“Why you didn’t recognize me.”

“Oh.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m sorry.”

Crawly’s mouth twisted into a half-smile. Of course Aziraphale would apologize for something he couldn’t control. Bloody fucking perfect, still, wasn’t he?

“Nothing to apologize for, angel. Not your fault.”

Aziraphale hummed. “Yes, but that can’t have been pleasant.”

_You’ve no idea._ “It was fine.”

“Really?” Damn, Crawly was really going to have to work on this lying thing some more.

“Like I said, we didn’t know each other that well.”

_I made the stars, and you watched me. I loved you, and you loved me. I knew you better than I knew myself. If you asked me, I could tell you the exact shape of the gold mark between your shoulder blades. If I wanted to, I could tell you your favorite hymn, and I could tell you that if you tried to sing it, you wouldn’t get more than four lines in before you’d break down in laughter about how bad you sound. If you wanted me to, I could tell you how it feels to kiss you. We only knew each other as well as our hearts know how to beat. Not that well, really._

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, turning once more to face the rolling grey water below.

When he left a few hours later, both he and Crawly were stone-cold sober, which hadn’t happened before. He said goodbye, and Crawly grunted something close to “see you” back at him, and then he was gone again, back belowdecks, back to blessing Noah’s family and caring for the animals.

There was an ache in Crawly’s thin chest that had been there since the day he’d forced himself to fit into a body that looked like someone he no longer was, since Aziraphale had looked at him and not known that he’d loved him. He’d felt it every day, an inescapable gnawing feeling that clawed at his insides and forced him to think in all of his quiet moments about what he’d lost, but now he finally understood why it was there.

Crawly had never understood why Aziraphale didn’t remember him, but he’d also never planned to ask. That would have been an odd conversation to have, and so he’d resolved himself to let it lie.

But then Aziraphale had soaked his own brain cells in syrupy alcohol, and he’d let his usual politeness and self-restraint slip, and he’d been the one to bring it up. Crawly had gotten answers without ever having to ask.

Knowing didn’t _help_, necessarily, but it didn’t make the ache any worse, either. It just sort of gave the ache a reason for being there, a piece of solid ground on which to anchor. Aziraphale hadn’t chosen to forget him; Heaven had chosen for him. It was a small comfort, but it was a comfort nonetheless.

More than that, though, Crawly knew that Azirphale didn’t entirely accept that Heaven had made the right call, and that was something of a relief as well. Aziraphale wanted to remember why he’d loved the people he’d lost, wanted to understand what had made the beings-who-were-now-demons wonderful. He’d always seen the good in everything and everyone, and apparently, he didn’t realize that he shouldn’t go looking for the good in beings that were fundamentally Evil. It would never have even occurred to him that demons - that _Crawly_ \- were supposed to have lost all of the things that made them worth loving.

The more Crawly thought about it, the more he realized that the Aziraphale who was here with him was, at his core, the same as the one he’d lost. Aziraphale still loved the stars, and he still laughed like music and blushed when he was nervous. He still wrung his fingers together and fidgeted when he was uncomfortable, and he still didn’t like to be alone. He still looked for the good in everyone and everything, and he still wanted to be kind to the people everyone else ignored.

He was also still in Crawly’s life, and Crawly was still in his.

This Aziraphale was almost exactly the same one he’d met so long ago, the one who’d preferred to watch StarMaker work than do his own job. This Aziraphale was the one who’d been created with a flaming sword in his hand but who had never liked to use it. This Aziraphale was Aziraphale-before-StarMaker, mostly, except for the fact that he remembered loving angels who Fell.

That was what was different. The Aziraphale that StarMaker had met had been wide-eyed and nervous about talking to an archangel. The first time they’d kissed, Aziraphale had been shaking. The Aziraphale who’d loved StarMaker had, at first, had so much love and no idea what to do with all of it, and he’d been terrified that it would somehow run out. But StarMaker had been afraid, too, so they’d found out how to love together. They’d loved each other through soft kisses and light touches and whispered words, and by the end, they could read each other’s thoughts with short glances, and StarMaker had spent his time wrapped up in the easy softness of Aziraphale’s body.

Now, a millennium and much more after the Fall, Crawly knew that the Aziraphale who was here now remembered loving him, even if it wasn’t really _him_ that Aziraphale remembered loving. Aziraphale had no idea of who he’d loved or why, but he certainly remembered doing the loving. That made him different than he had been before he’d met StarMaker, because he wasn’t unsure about love anymore. He knew what it felt like to love, and he also knew the pain that came along with losing that love. In that way, he was someone completely different than the Aziraphale that Crawly remembered.

With a sigh, Crawly sat down on the rain-soaked wood and picked up his wineskin. It was stained dark with the evidence of his and Aziraphale’s miraculous sobriety, but he didn’t care. That, too, was a reminder of what he had here, what he was able to hold onto, just like the tiny tastes of Aziraphale’s lips that mixed with the wine and the light accidental brushes of Aziraphale’s fingers over his. Every part of every moment with Aziraphale in the here and now was just as important as any of the kisses and embraces and laughs had been in Heaven, and the more time Crawly spent with Aziraphale, the more aware of this fact he became.

Crawly fell asleep with his hands underneath his head and the unending rain splashing on his face. When he dreamed of Aziraphale, something about it was different. The gut-wrenching pain of reliving his memories from Heaven was still there, but somehow, he was calmer. It hurt, but it didn’t feel as much like dying as it always had before.

In the morning, Crawly realized that it was the first time since the Fall that he’d slept without waking up to the sound of his own screaming.


	5. Sodom, 1897 BC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A certain angel and a certain demon were both present at the destruction of Sodom, and one of them had a lot more to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> Sorry for the two-week hiatus; things in my life went upside down and backwards, but I've hopefully landed back on my feet the right way up again. The reason I'm posting tonight instead of tomorrow is that tomorrow I will be traveling for much of the day, and I didn't want to leave you all in the lurch again! 
> 
> My preview-reader said that this chapter made him cry, so I'm... sorry-not-sorry in advance? As always, I promise to give these idiots a happy ending. It'll happen with this fic, I swear it, but there will be some more chapters of through-history life from Crawly/Crowley's perspective first. 
> 
> Thank you all for taking the time to read! I hope you have a wonderful remainder of your weekend.

Crawly’s thin fingers were wrapped around the familiar cold comfort of hardened clay, and the sickly-sweet sharpness of the wine coated his tongue. He came here most nights, sat and talked to the bartender and other regular patrons, drank some wine (often more than _some_ \- he’d lost track of how many mornings he’d woken with his cheek plastered to the sticky stone countertop), and left in the morning to go do his best to avoid doing any real temptations.

He did enough to keep up appearances, of course, but never any more than that. Tempting humans wasn’t really his bag. He wasn’t sure that he really _wanted_ to claim their souls for Hell; it was bad enough down there for a near-immortal being, and Crawly really didn’t want to imagine what demons like Aamon and Beleth and Screwtape would do to the souls of the humans they were given. Screwtape in particular was fond of a certain kind of cruel irony, mental games that involved using everything someone cared about to tear them down. He played with other demons (something that Crawly knew a little too well), so he almost certainly played with humans, too.

Torment, anguish, and despair. The unholy trinity of Hellish existence. There was never a day when Crawly missed it, and there were many days when he did exactly what he was currently doing in order to forget it. So no, he wasn’t really ecstatic about working hard to send people with mortal lives into a place like that for all of eternity.

Luckily, the city of Sodom was a good place for a demon who wanted to get credit for doing his job without actually doing much of it at all. There was a lively group of thugs and murderers who spent quite a bit of their downtime here, and so it was easy for Crawly to follow them around and report back to head office with their activities. _Tempted a man to murder his wife,_ check._ Tempted a man to steal from a beggar,_ check. _Tempted a beggar to kill the man who stole from him,_ check. Line after line after line of cuneiform poked into little clay tablets that Crawly had been sending Down once every few weeks for the nearly two months that he’d been here. Lie after lie after lie, but all based in truth. That was the secret ingredient in a good lie, a lie that people believed.

Crawly motioned for more wine, and he swallowed the remaining contents of his cup in one large gulp. The stuff was like thick syrup when it was undiluted like this, but mixing it with water was too much effort, so Crawly drank it straight. The bartender always shook his head and laughed and told him to watch himself, but he never refused to hand it over.

His name was Amos, and he was almost more of a friend to Crawly than anything else. He was a decently handsome man, tall and strong-jawed and more than a little bit soft around the middle. He had dark eyes that sparkled when he laughed and broad hands that were unusually soft, and he teased Crawly mercilessly about everything from the fabric of his robes to the color of his hair. His wife, Anah, and their two daughters lived upstairs, and Crawly had inevitably found himself meeting and talking to all of them. In spite of himself, in spite of the fact that he knew that they would all grow old and wither and die and leave him alone, Crawly had taken a liking to the entire family.

Anah had been wary of him at first, and he understood why. He was a pale-skinned man with strange eyes and long hair the color of fire and sunsets, and he spent almost all of his free time drinking himself into a stupor in Amos’s bar. He should not have been likable or trustworthy. Anah should have kept herself to herself and shielded her daughters from Crawly, but she didn’t. Instead, she brought him strong tea on the mornings after he’d passed out on the bar top, and she laid a blanket around his shoulders on cold nights, and she let her daughters plait his hair. She was like a mother hen, always clucking at him to quit drinking and get a girlfriend, constantly pecking at him to take a bath or to get off his arse and go to work. She was fiery but kind, and Crawly had liked her immediately.

Sometimes, when Crawly was still sober enough to hold a conversation and Anah had questions for him, they would talk. She was curious by nature and damn near brilliant, and she would sit with him for hours and ask him questions about the world. Crawly would tell her what he knew, and he would let her rant to him about things that neither of them understood. He came to know about the sickness that had taken her mother and Amos’s father, and he heard the stories of how she had chosen the names for her daughters.

For the first time since Eve, Crawly had a friend, and he loved her just as much as he’d ever loved Eve. It helped a bit that Anah was similar to Eve; she had the same curls of dark hair, and her laugh was close enough to Eve’s that it rattled Crawly’s composure at first.

Anah felt differently about Amos than Eve had about Adam, though. Amos treated her well, and while his grip on her life choices was a bit tighter than Crawly would have liked, it was much looser than most men in the area. He knew that she was smarter than he was, and he was not shy about his affection for her. Anah returned his love in equal measure, kissing back when she was kissed and brushing locks of hair out of his eyes. They were happy, the happiest people Crawly could find, and they had everything that Crawly had lost all those thousands of years ago. They had gentle touches and whispered compliments, loud laughter and interlocked fingers, hope for the future and promises of _until we die_, which was as close to _forever_ as humans could manage.

Some part of Crawly knew that this happiness is what drew him to Amos in the first place. There were hundreds of bars in Sodom - it was a town known for its drunken debauchery, after all - but he’d landed at this one. He’d come to the one place where fights almost never broke out, the one bar run by a man who loved his wife enough that he didn’t beat her black and blue or take strange women to bed, the one bar that had some sense of goodness. Amos’s bar was home, really, and the other regulars knew that the red-haired man was as good as an adopted son to the owners.

Amos was leaning on the bar, smirking as he poured Crawly a new glass of wine and left the jug behind. “Be careful, my friend. Anah says it looks like rain tonight, and we wouldn’t want you to slip and break your skull because you can’t walk straight.”

“What makes you think ‘m leaving?”

Amos laughed. “I should tell Anah to have the girls come plait your hair. Keep it out of the way so that it doesn’t get sticky when you fall asleep in spilled wine.”

“Mmm.”

With another laugh, Amos moved away to tend to the man who had sat down at the other end of the bar. Crawly drained his cup of wine and poured another, noting that his vision wasn’t quite tracking with the movements of his head when he turned it.

“Crawly,” Amos said, lumbering back over to where Crawly was sitting. “Anah has a question for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She would like to know if you would prefer to stay upstairs with us rather than down here at the bar.”

Crawly blinked. “Eh?”

“You can live with us, if you would like. She says that she would like to help you stop drinking.”

“She wants- you want me to stay?”

Big shoulders shrugged. “We would like that, yes. If you would.”

Warmth pricked at the corners of Crawly’s eyes, and he forced himself to sober up. It was enough that he could concentrate on keeping his eyes human-ish, but it wasn’t so much that Amos would notice the extra wine in the cup and jug. He would not cry in front of this human. He would not do it.

“Uh,” Crawly said.

Amos grinned at him. “You would like to do this, yes?”

Crawly knew that it would be dangerous and stupid to say yes. He knew that he should say no, that he should thank Amos for his kindness and tell him to pass along the thanks to Anah, and then he should leave this place and never come back. If anyone from Hell paid him a visit and found him with Amos’s family, they would slaughter all of them and take Crawly back Down for a long stint of torture and too many long lectures on proper conduct. It would have been incredibly stupid to say yes. It would have been downright foolish.

“Yes,” Crawly said, and he was immediately overcome by the feeling that he should bash his head into something solid for being such an idiot.

Amos moved faster than Crawly had thought possible for a man, skirting around the edge of the bar and yanking Crawly to his feet with such force that something popped in Crawly’s shoulder. Before he could register what was happening, Crawly found himself being wrapped in Amos’s thick arms. His cheek was smashed against the bartender’s broad chest, and the laugh that rumbled through Amos’s body echoed in Crawly’s ears.

“My wife will be pleased to hear this,” Amos said, setting Crawly back on the ground and brushing his hair in a cursory gesture of kindness. “She likes you.”

“I like her,” Crawly managed, head still swimming from the feeling of being held. He hadn’t been held like that since his last day in Heaven. Amos’s hug wasn’t exactly like Aziraphale’s, but it was a close thing. A soft body pressed against Crawly’s angular one, strong hands on Crawly’s shoulders, thick arms forcing the air from his lungs in a rush. It was another almost, one more thing that was too close to what he’d lost.

This time, Crawly did cry. He broke down, one freckle-covered shaking hand braced against the stone top of the bar, and let a few tears slide over his cheeks.

“My friend, are you alright?”

“Fine,” Crawly muttered, tasting salt on his tongue when he licked his lips with a tongue that was slightly more forked than it had been moments earlier. “Fine, yeah.”

“I will get Anah. She will help you get settled.”

Crawly smiled, a weak and shaky thing. “Thank you.”

Hell had never been much of a family. It was nothing more than a group of former angels who hated each other only marginally less than they hated the ones who hadn’t Fallen. Hell was always crowded, so while the demons that lived there weren’t by any means touch-starved, they usually weren’t receiving touches that held any kindness or love. If you were touched in Hell, it was either accidental or it hurt.

Hugs didn’t happen. Hand-holding didn’t happen. Soft caresses didn’t happen. Kindness didn’t happen. Lucifer hadn’t seen a need for it, and so it simply wasn’t there.

But it was here. It was here, here in this man’s smile and this man’s arms. It was here, in the girls whose tiny fingers tangled in messy red curls. It was here, in this woman who brushed her fingers over Crawly’s arm like she cared about him. Kindness lived in this family in a way that Crawly hadn’t known was possible outside of Heaven. They spun it into their touches and their laughs and their words, and they gave it to strangers without a worry that it might be wasted. They were the best kind of people, and they had chosen Crawly. They wanted him.

This family wanted to be _his_ family, and because Crawly simply didn’t have the willpower to say no to kindness anymore, he let them.

*********

In hindsight, Crawly should have known that it wouldn’t last. He was a demon. He was not destined for good things. The good things that he was given were fleeting, impermanent, and inevitably painful, and he was an idiot for forgetting that.

It had been nearly a century since Crawly had seen Aziraphale, and there hadn’t been any communications from the angel about plans for the near future. So, when Aziraphale ran into Amos’s bar on a completely ordinary weeknight, Crawly was not mentally or emotionally or physically prepared to see him. He could feel a patch of scales break out across the skin of his upper back and hastily set it back to normal, hoping against hope that it didn’t catch the attention of the girls who were currently occupied with weaving together thick strands of his hair.

Aziraphale looked frantic. His white curls were plastered to his forehead with sweat, which was something he would never have allowed to happen if he’d been his normal fussy self. Blue eyes flicked around the bar, not resting on anything for more than a fraction of a second before they came to rest on Crawly.

Crawly didn’t even have time to raise his eyebrow or formulate the syllables that would constitute a question before Aziraphale had crossed the room and offered him a hand up (he was sitting on the floor near the back wall - the girls couldn’t reach his head when he was standing or sitting in a chair).

“Uh,” Crawly said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the girls, who had frozen with their fingers in his hair to stare at this new colorless man. “Bit busy.”

Aziraphale’s eyes sharpened. It wasn’t exactly anger that did it, but it was a near thing. “So sorry to interrupt, but I have an urgent matter to discuss with you.”

There was something too-rushed about it, something that made Crawly very aware of the fact that this wasn’t so much an invitation as a summons. Quietly, he got to his feet and leaned over to kiss the tops of the girls’ heads.

“Be back soon, okay?”

The older one stared at him. “Who is he?”

“A… friend,” Crawly said carefully, trying not to be hurt by the way Aziraphale flinched at the use of the word. “Tell your mother that I’ll be right back, yeah?”

A heavy hand clamped around Crawly’s skinny wrist, and he was tugged out of the bar before he could hear the girl’s answer. He caught sight of Amos’s protective gaze and clenched jaw on the way out the door and shook his head to dismiss the concern that had risen up in his those dark eyes. This was fine, probably. Most likely nothing to get in a fuss over.

Aziraphale pulled him into the alley behind the bar, all traces of his usual polite decorum buried beneath whatever this new feeling was. Crawly wriggled free of Aziraphale’s grip, backing against the wall, fists clenched in preparation for what he was sure was going to be a scolding of some sort. Possibly one of the few minor temptations he’d actually done had affected a man that Aziraphale was supposed to save, or maybe he was supposed to have been the one to do the dinner planning this time?

“What is it?” Crawly asked, leveling his voice as much as he could. “Couldn’t keep away from me?” Sarcasm was as good a defense as he’d found, so he was sticking with it.

“No,” Aziraphale said so quickly that Crawly had to stifle a wince. “I’m sorry about that, but we have to go.”

“Go?”

“Yes, go.” The frantic edge was back in Aziraphale’s voice, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Your wings, you should get them out.”

“What, here?” Crawly goggled at him. “There are humans around, angel.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just do it - we have to go, right now.”

“Does- doesn’t matter? What has gotten into you? Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“_Crawly_,” Aziraphale said, and then that soft-strong hand was back around his wrist again. “Please.”

And sweet Someone, there would have been a time when that word would have been enough for Crawly to bend over backwards and do whatever was being asked of him. But that time had passed - he still loved Aziraphale, but things were different now. It wouldn’t look right for him to cave to the request of an angel just because he batted his pretty eyelashes and said _please_. He couldn’t do that, not if he wanted to maintain some of his practiced demonic facade.

“What the fuck are you going on about?”

The air crackled, and Aziraphale’s white wings tore through the fabric of space and time, scattering bent and scorched white feathers in every direction.

They were an absolute mess (really, had he even preened them at all since Eden?), and Crawly was halfway into a teasing smirk when Aziraphale’s hand changed position again. It landed on his hip, and _oh fuck, he was touching his waist, why was he touching his waist?_ Crawly didn’t need to breathe, but he’d gotten quite used to it, and a miserable kind of burning feeling accompanied his sudden inability to do so.

For millennia, now, Crawly had been doing better at not living in the past. He’d been trying to catalogue the good parts of the here-and-now because it didn’t do him any good to mourn for what he’d lost. He’d been trying to memorize the smiles and laughs and idle accidental touches of the Aziraphale who didn’t love him, hoping that new things would fill in the gaping hole in his chest left by the one who had. The memories of Heaven were drugs that tore through his veins and seared black marks into his heart, and so he’d forced himself to stop thinking about them. He’d substituted them with other things, like syrup-thick wine and a family and a lot of Hellbound lies, and he’d stopped being quite so addicted. Little fixes here and there, little dips into the way it felt to kiss Aziraphale, little hits of warm laughter and a body that was soft in all the places his was sharp.

And he had been doing better. He’d been capable of going more than a day without sobbing or screaming or yelling himself hoarse. He found himself reliving the times he’d shared bread or wine with the Aziraphale who was here more often than he thought about the way his tongue felt against his Aziraphale’s teeth. Heaven was Crawly’s drug, and it always would be, but he’d thought that he was past the addiction.

He’d thought this, and then Aziraphale had wrapped his whole arm around Crawly’s thin torso, and the memory of the last time that this had happened shot through his brain and body and heart and fucking _soul_ like the sweetest acid. That time, that last time, the day of the Fall. The day that Aziraphale’s arm had last been around him, they’d been kissing, and Aziraphale had said_ “my love, my beloved”_ against his lips and pushed the words inside his mouth. And StarMaker had kissed him back and called him beautiful, and they’d been in love.

This type of hold was different than that, though. It was purposeful and strong and goal-oriented, and there wasn’t so much as an ounce of affection in it. Aziraphale’s hand tightened, and then Crawly was in the air, yanked upwards by a single powerful beat of Aziraphale’s wings. Aziraphale was holding him with one arm, his thick fingers pressing so hard into the skin-and-bone of Crawly’s hip that Crawly knew there would be bruises there.

“Aziraphale,” Crawly said for the first time since an empty field at sunrise nearly three thousand years before, “what the Heaven are you doing?”

“Getting us out.” Aziraphale’s voice was shaking. Crawly couldn’t tell if it was from fear, exertion, or something entirely else.

“Why?”

“I don’t- please, Crawly, let it be for now. Wait until… just wait.”

Crawly’s hands hung at his sides. He wanted so badly to wrap them around Aziraphale’s neck, to tuck his head under that soft jaw, but no. He wouldn’t. Aziraphale wasn’t holding him like that. This wasn’t an invitation for intimacy; it was something born from some unnamable indescribable thing that lay heavy and dark in the blue of Aziraphale’s eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw. This wasn’t Heaven. This was Earth, this was Sodom. This wasn’t Then, this was Now.

The sinking feeling in Crawly’s stomach was all too familiar. It was the same one he got whenever Aziraphale smiled at him in a way that was too close to the way he remembered, when something about Now got painfully almost-but-not-quite like it had been Then. Too near to the same to be different, and Crawly’s brain didn’t know what to do with it. He’d forced his brain to draw a clear division between what had been and what was, a hundred-foot barbed-wire-lined no man’s land. But sometimes, things didn’t fit. And when things didn’t fit with Now, they fell back into Then, and Crawly got addicted all over again.

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d spend a few centuries getting sober from this one.

So Crawly didn’t hold on. He just let himself be, let his chest press against Aziraphale’s and concentrated on keeping the beating of his heart somewhere close to steady. No giveaways, now. No mistakes. Nothing like _I have, do, and will love you._

Aziraphale landed in the sand a few miles out of town, just on the other side of a hill. He was out of breath. His curls stuck up at odd angles, the consequence of sweat and wind. His hand snapped away from Crawly’s side, and Crawly’s skin had never been colder.

Crawly opened his mouth to ask his question again, to demand an explanation for a spontaneous panicked flight into the countryside, but Aziraphale beat him to it.

“I’m so sorry, Crawly. I should explain - will you sit, please? You’re making me anxious.”

“Oh, sure, _I’m_ making _you_ anxious,” Crawly spat, but he sat down anyway.

“Thank you.” Aziraphale took a steadying breath, his chest still shaking when he let it out in a puff that was so tight and loud that it was nearly a whistle. “I would have given you more time to prepare to leave if we’d had it, but I only just found out this morning, and it took me all day to find you.”

“Wh-”

“They’re destroying the city,” Aziraphale said, and Crawly’s heart mashed itself into his ribs.

“_What?_”

Aziraphale wasn’t looking at Crawly. He was picking at a piece of dead skin next to his fingernails, laser-focused on it because it wasn’t staring at him like he’d just broken every good thing in the world, which was what Crawly was doing.

“They said that there’s too much sin there. Sodom, and the other one-”

“Gomorrah,” Crawly finished. He’d been there for a while, and it was a very similar kind of place. Both cities were full to bursting with bloodied corpses and dirty fingers that wrapped around gold pieces that weren’t theirs. Both cities housed people who were usuually far too drunk on cheap alcohol and who spent their evenings in dark-tinted rooms that stank of sex and broken marriages.

There was sin in Sodom, and there was sin in Gomorrah, but it hadn’t occurred to Crawly that there was _too much_. Apparently, though, someone Upstairs had drawn a line, and Sodom and Gomorrah had fallen on the wrong side of it.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said softly. “They’re going to burn it.”

“When?”

Blue eyes went wide and soft. “Tonight.”

“No,” Crawly breathed. “No, wait, my family-”

A choking sound ripped free of Aziraphale’s pretty lips. “Your what?”

Crawly scrambled to his feet, wings snapping outward from his back. “Amos and Anah. The girls. I have to- I have to go back, I have to-”

“You _can’t_.” Aziraphale’s voice was shaky again, and his hand clutched at Crawly’s wrist again. Vice-like, unbreakable.

“Let go, angel.”

“No. I won’t have you going- no, absolutely not.” Aziraphale’s other hand slid back around Crawly’s waist again. But instead of lifting him into the air, this time it kept him on the ground.

Crawly flapped his wings, trying to get out, trying to get free, but Aziraphale pulled him back down. His feet hit the ground with a sickening crunching sound - he’d broken some bones, probably, but it was nothing he couldn’t fix later - but he didn’t care. His family didn’t know what was coming. He had to save them.

“Crawly,” Aziraphale said with a few more voices than he’d had just moments ago. “No.”

“Fuck you,” Crawly snapped, feeling the yellow of his irises take over the whites of his eyes. A tongue that had two tips instead of one flicked between teeth that hadn’t previously been quite so sharp, and a patch of black scales rippled over his shoulder. He beat his wings again, but Aziraphale’s grip on him didn’t break.

He wasn’t going anywhere unless Aziraphale let him go, so he changed tack. He forced himself to look into those blue eyes, made his breathing slow down to normal and did a quick stop-restart of his heart.

And then he wrapped his bony fingers around Aziraphale’s biceps, and he pleaded.

“Please, Aziraphale.” There it was again, that name. Familiar, and yet somehow so wrong. His Aziraphale would never have stopped him from saving someone. His Aziraphale would have loved him too much to watch him hurt. “Let me go back. Let me go get them - you can come with me, if you want, I just need to get them. Make sure they’re safe.”

“I can’t let- you can’t,” Aziraphale said, the end of his sentence stained by something that might have been a whimper.

“They won’t notice if four people don’t die! Amos, he’s so good, you’d like him. And Anah - she’s kind, lovely. She’s like Eve - I knew her, did I ever tell you? Of course you know that I made her Fall, but I didn’t want to.” Distantly, Crawly recognized that he was letting himself slip. His true colors were sliding through the gaps between his teeth and the spaces between his words, shades of soft blue and gold instead of black and blood-red like they should have been. He was showing Aziraphale that he wasn’t quite as bad as he should have been, and that should have scared him, but it didn’t. Not now, not when there was so much else to lose. “Aziraphale, angel, please. They have two daughters. You saw them earlier, they were-”

“Fixing your hair.” It was hollow, empty-sounding, and Crawly’s insides collapsed.

“Yes. Please, please, let’s go get them - we can go together, we can save-”

“No.”

“_Please_,” Crawly begged, broken feet slipping in the sand as he sank against Aziraphale.

“They’re going to sanctify the whole place, Crawly. If you don’t get out in time, you’ll be killed.”

“Why do you fucking care? I’ll just come back in a few months. New body. No worries.” The anger was rising in Crawly’s chest again, fiery and destructive, and he was gagging on it.

Aziraphale’s jaw clenched. “You’ll be _killed_. Not discorporated, Crawly. Killed. You’re a demon, you can’t take a smiting of purifying fire and survive.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Pale blue eyes flashed navy. “No, you won’t. I won’t- you can’t do that.”

A sound like thunder above a battlefield rolled over the hills, hitting Crawly’s ears with such agonizing force that he was surprised they hadn’t started bleeding. There was the roar of fire and the rumble of falling buildings, of course, but there were also the screams. A chorus of them, the most terrible choir, loud enough to hear from miles away. It shouldn’t have been possible to hear it, but Crawly did.  
  
When he looked at Aziraphale’s face, he knew that he had heard them, too.

“I’m sorry.”

It was sincere, the apology, and that was the worst part. Aziraphale was genuinely apologetic. He truly felt bad, honestly felt pity and sadness and grief on Crawly’s behalf, and that was so much worse than it would have been if he’d just said it because it was the polite thing to do.

Crawly’s wings melted back into the plane of existence that was just a little beyond this one. Slowly, he unfisted his fingers from Aziraphale’s robes, pulling his body back and turning away.

He walked to the top of the hill, and he saw it. It looked like the remains of a bonfire, blackened and still smoldering, smoke rising into the inky blue-black sky and curling around the stars that he’d made.

Aziraphale’s hand landed on his shoulder, soft and strong as always. And for once, the angel said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

*********

It took three weeks for the cities to stop burning.

When the ground was cool and free of holy fire, a demon with hair that was in desperate need of plaiting wandered the streets of Sodom, stepping over charred bodies and crushed rubble. He stopped at a large wreck of stones that lay between the remains of two walls. Some of the rock was soot-blackened, and other pieces were stained purple with once-sticky wine.

And the demon started digging there. He dug until his hands bled, pulling out smaller fragments of stone and clay and wood and setting them aside. He wept as he worked, washing the dust from his cheeks with his tears.

In the end, there were four neat piles of rubble stacked above the bones of the people the demon loved. He left them there, a silent memorial to a family he’d had for a time that was both longer than he’d deserved and shorter than he’d wanted.

When a blue-eyed angel found the graves, he did four things. Firstly, he prayed for the souls of the humans beneath them. He marked each grave with a protective sigil that glowed gold before settling into the stone. And he cried, too, though whether it was for the humans or the demon who had (beyond reason, beyond possibility) loved them, no one could be sure.

The last thing that the angel did was raise his eyes to the sky. Standing under the stars in the rubble of the city of Sodom, Aziraphale did something he had never done before: he asked the Almighty a question.

He asked the Almighty why.


	6. Alexandria, 48 BC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale saved Crawly’s life in Sodom, and the time comes for Crawly to repay that debt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovely readers! There are quite a few more of you this time than there were last week, so hello! And welcome! Please feel free to say hi to me in the comments or on Tumblr (@hopeinthedark1901) if you’d like to! 
> 
> I’m a huge history buff, so I did quite a bit of research (and got sucked into it and had to crawl back out) for this chapter. I’ll put some historical context in the endnote - if you’re interested in it, please check it out! If not, skip it. 
> 
> Chapter-specific warnings: language (duh), really mild body horror (burns and blood and Crawly’s demonic form, but nothing graphic), excessive pining. Also, both of the idiots being, well, idiots. That’s a warning-worthy thing, right?
> 
> Edit: if you're looking for an update, info on that is on my Tumblr [here](https://hopeinthedark1901.tumblr.com/post/189793973587/writing-update).

Crawly wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened, but at some point since the invention of written language, Aziraphale had fallen in love with the way that humans thought about things. For centuries, their conversations over wine and dates or spiced cured meat or slices of sweet fruit (which Aziraphale ate, but Crawly rarely did) had inevitably turned to what Aziraphale had read in the time since he’d last seen Crawly. It was always some kind of fake story and some kind of wisdom that the humans accepted as truth, something imagined and something else that was as close to real as the humans were able to get.

When he talked about books, Aziraphale’s voice would get pitchy in places. It bordered on squeaky when he’d found something that made him proud of how clever the humans were getting, and his eyes filled with sunlight when he spoke about meeting an author he respected. He talked with his hands, too, waving them in circles and pointing to spots of empty air with his fingers.

He was beautiful, and Crawly loved him. That much had never and would never change.

After the destruction of Sodom, Aziraphale started talking about books in a different way. It stopped being off-handed mentions and unspecified praises of a certain writer’s phrasing, and it became recommendations.

The first time that Aziraphale had said, “I think you’d enjoy it, Crawly. You can borrow mine, if you’d like,” Crawly hadn’t known what to do with himself. Aziraphale had evidently been thinking about him enough to consider what kinds of books he might like to read, and Crawly had absolutely no idea how to handle that information.

So, while his heart beat in unsteady jumps inside of his chest, Crawly forced his face into a sneer. He huffed a clipped laugh into his beer, splashing drops of foam and pale amber liquid across the table.

“I don’t read.”

Aziraphale flinched like Crawly had hit him. “What? How can you not read?”

“No interest,” Crawly had lied. He _did_ read - he was an excellent reader, really, and had even done a bit of writing during his time in India - but Aziraphale didn’t need to know that. Other demons wouldn’t have had the slightest desire to pick up something created by humans and understand it, so Crawly pretended like he didn’t either.

“Well,” Aziraphale had sniffed, tugging at the edge of his robes in a way that was really very snobbish and extremely adorable. “If you ever _do_ decide to pick up a book, I’d suggest that one first. Gilgamesh is rather an interesting character, and he has a notable encounter with a serpent towards the end.”

“Not every story about a serpent is something I want to read, angel,” Crawly said, but a wry smile crept over his lips anyway. Ridiculous Aziraphale with his ridiculous love for the stories of humans.

Crawly read _The Epic of Gilgamesh_ as soon as he’d found someone who was willing to sell it to him. He never told Aziraphale.

It almost became something of a tradition from that point forward. Every time they sat down to a meal or took a walk through the streets of some new city, Aziraphale would tell him about another book. Every time, Crawly would laugh and say “I don’t read,” and every time he would find himself hunched over tablets or scrolls a few weeks later, reading every word with careful attention.

If it made Aziraphale think of him, Crawly read it. He could imagine the high sound of Aziraphale’s laugh at funny moments, could picture the soft downturn of gentle lips when characters tried and failed, could almost see the tear stains over the words that marked deaths and tragedies. Crawly read because he could find Aziraphale in the words Aziraphale loved.

Given Aziraphale’s fascination with human literature and learning, it wasn’t really any surprise that he packed up and moved to Alexandria as soon as he learned that the best library in the world was being built there. He’d been in the Indus Valley (as had Crawly), but it had been a bit too hot and far too muggy for his tastes, so Crawly knew that he was relieved to have an excuse to leave.

It also wasn’t really any surprise that when Aziraphale left India, Crawly did as well. Aziraphale went straight to Alexandria, of course, but Crawly stopped off in Cairo first. Proximity to the angel was good, but being in the same exact city at all times wouldn’t have been a good idea. Keeping up appearances, right? Trying to act like there was somewhere else he’d rather be than at Azirphale’s side, hanging on Aziraphale’s every word, cataloguing each of Aziraphale’s smiles. Pretending like time away from Aziraphale was what he wanted.

Crawly stayed in Cairo for just over half a century, performing some minor temptations and trying to stay mostly in the shadows. Not too much attention, not too little. He wanted to be there, to do enough to be able to send memos back Downstairs on a semi-regular basis, but he didn’t want a _reputation_. Sodom had taught him a great many lessons, chief among which was that life is a whole fuck of a lot easier if people don’t know you well enough to love you. So Crowley never went to the same bar in Cairo more than twice in a week. He changed his appearance some, which he’d never (since Eden) done too much before. On certain nights, his hair hung in long ringlets down his back, and he dressed in robes that were high-class enough to allow him to order rich-man’s-wine without garnering suspicion. Other times, he pulled his hair out of his face, smudged his high cheekbones with dirt, and found himself a (usually very sticky) corner table to sit at while he drank enough beer to drown a whale.

And then there were the nights when he left the bars behind, the times when he ventured into places that were more than a little seedy and full of men who were looking for something that Crawly was never ready or willing to offer. When he went to these places, Crawly made his hair short and messy, fluffed it and tugged at it until it seemed to be appropriate. His robes were clean but not expensive, and he dropped his usual easy-looking smiles and too-charming silver tongue. He sat alone, sipping on something overly sweet, and he waited.

There was always at least one. Young, handsome, shy. Head down, eyes mostly on the floor but occasionally flicking up, cheeks flooding with splotchy pinks and reds if he ever made eye contact with any other man. That type of man knew why he was here, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be.

They came in all shapes and sizes, hair and eye and skin colors all different shades of black or brown or tan. Some had muscles, some didn’t. Some were lean, some were soft around the everywhere. Some were in the middle. It didn’t matter to Crawly what they looked like. He didn’t care, because he wasn’t interested in helping them with _that_. No, he was interested in making sure they were alright. He wanted to talk to them.

And so Crawly would wave them over, buy them a drink, and ask things. How did this one get here? Was it his first time to a place like this? Did he have a reason for being so shy? Did he have a type, and was there someone here that he had his eye on?

What Crawly was asking, really, was _How can I help you be okay with yourself?_

Sometimes they would tell him everything about everything. Unsupportive families, feeling like they were disappointing the gods, feeling broken or useless, being unsure of how to talk to men like this. Other times, they were wary of him, spooked by his eyes or skeptical of his blunt questions. Unsurprisingly, there were also more than a few who were plainly very attracted to him, often even to the point that it made it hard for them to string together coherent sentences. In cases like these, Crawly was patient and offered plenty of reassuring smiles in between repetitions of his platonic intentions. It didn’t always work, but when it did, he found that those men were the most likely to give him the names of the people who had hurt them.

Names were important to Crawly. Names meant that he had people to curse.

He never killed any of the people he cursed, but he made their lives miserable. Freak accidents that resulted in broken bones, a plague wiping out all of their livestock (but only _their_ livestock, for reasons that their neighbors could never quite work out), a longer-than-average bout of whatever itchy and uncomfortable skin infection Crawly could manage to think of. Small torments, snaps of his skinny fingers that brought suffering to some of the worst people on Earth.

In a direct sort of way, it was probably the most demonic thing Crawly had ever done in his whole life. It was the only intentional infliction of actual pain he performed, the only times he heard someone scream and relished it. But it wasn’t born from a desire to cause as much Hell to come to Earth as possible, as it would have been for another demon. Instead it was his revenge, born from anger and bred in spite, and Crawly loved the way it burned in his chest.

The men who talked to Crawly never knew who he was. He never gave the same name twice, so even if they eventually crossed paths with one another and gave matching physical descriptions of him, they wouldn’t be able to find him again.

It was the first (and second, and third, and fortieth) time that Crawly named himself.

On the hundred-and-seventeenth morning of Crawly’s fifty-second year in Cairo, he opened his eyes to find a frog sitting at the foot of his bed.

_“Crawly,”_ the frog said into Crawly’s mind, and Crawly rolled onto the floor with a yelp.

“Duke Hastur.” Crawly winced at the tremor in his voice. He licked his surprise-induced fangs back into the shape of normal human incisors and willed the skin on his hips to lose its scales.

_“Why were you sleeping?”_

Right. That.

“Lots of tempting last night,” Crawly lied, climbing back onto the bed and finally making eye contact with the frog. “Bit knackered. It happens, y’know, with these human bodies.”

The frog stared at him. _“We don’t understand why you choose to have one of those. Being a serpent should serve your purposes well enough, shouldn’t it?”_

“Not for seducing.” Crawly had never seduced anyone in his life, but his memos to Hell said otherwise. “Gotta have a human body for that. Besides, helps to blend in. People trust me more if I look like them.”

_“Mmm.”_ Crawly didn’t spend a lot of time looking at frogs, but even he could tell that this one looked decidedly unconvinced. _“You didn’t have to look like **that**, though, did you?”_

“Like what?” he asked, knowing exactly what.

_“StarMaker,”_ Hastur said, and Crawly could hear that terrible laugh echo around inside his skull. _“You aren’t him anymore, you know.”_

“I know.”

_“Haven’t been for millennia.”_

“I know.”

_“Won’t be again.”_

Anger flared up, licking the back of Crawly’s throat, and he quashed the urge to smash the frog into his bedcovers.

“I _know_.”

Hastur laughed again, and Crawly made a valiant effort not to cringe.

_“So long as you know, then. That you’re ridiculous.”_

Crawly sighed and said, “Yeah, I know,” because he knew Hastur was right. He’d slipped into this body in the hopes that Aziraphale would recognize it, but then Aziraphale hadn’t, and yet he’d _kept_ the bloody thing. For no reason. For stupid reasons.

Ridiculous, yes. He was exactly that.

“Did you need something, your Unholiness?”

The frog, impossibly, sneered at him. _“You’ve got an assignment, Crawly. From Lord Beelzebub, no less! Quite the honor.”_

“Honor,” Crawly said as his heart attempted to force its way up his throat. He hadn’t had a direct assignment since there had been a garden and an apple and a woman named Eve. “Right. What’s the job?”

_“There’s a man in Rome named Gaius Julius Caesar. He’s going to change things, and we need you to make sure that those changes get made **our** way.”_

“Oh.”

_“Violence, bloodshed, scandals, whatever you can do.”_ Crawly could hear Hastur’s smile behind the words, sharp and vicious and everything a smile should never be.

“Right,” Crawly said. “Got it.”

_“You’re to go there now.”_

Crawly sighed. “Yes, fine.”

The frog blinked at him. _“Remember, Crawly. Hell is always watching.”_

“Of course,” Crawly said obligingly, even though he knew for a fact that Hell was too lazy to actually check up on him. They never had done until now, and he didn’t really think that they were planning on starting.

Something shifted in the air, and the frog vanished in a puff of sulfur-smelling smoke. For a moment, Crawly’s vision went foggy, and when it cleared, he knew exactly where, when, and how to find this Julius Caesar.

Crawly clicked his fingers, and his bedroom in Cairo lay dark and silent. The smell of spices and sulfur would linger there until it the building collapsed into ruin.

*********

For the second time in Crawly’s tenure on Earth, buildings were burning with someone he loved inside. This time, though, he was doing what he’d failed to do the first time around: trying to save them.

Of course, it also mattered quite a bit that the person inside of the flame-riddled building was not actually a person at all, but an angel. An angel that Crawly had loved and been in love with since he’d had white wings and golden freckles. Someone Crawly hadn’t seen for the better part of a century, someone who had an unchecked fascination with books.

Someone who was so stupidly devoted to the books he loved that he stayed behind to try to save some of them. And now he was choking on smoke, and the white-hot ash of burned papyrus was settling in soft piles on top of his curls. If Aziraphale burned here, Crawly knew that it wouldn’t be the end of the world. He’d come back in a few weeks or months or years, sit down next to Crawly at a dingy bar in some random part of the world, and make apologies. He’d probably joke, too, laugh about losing a body and complain about the things that were slightly wrong about this new one.

Crawly knew that Aziraphale could die here and everything would be okay. Except for the fact that it absolutely wouldn’t, not for Crawly, because he had already lost his Aziraphale and was not about to lose this one, too.

This was why Crawly was running through the library, throat burning from the heat and smoke and his own yelling, arms stretched towards the hunched-over shape that was Aziraphale. The closer he got, the more clearly he could hear Aziraphale’s hacking cough ripping its way through his teeth and past his lips.

Crawly couldn’t be sure whether or not Aziraphale recognized him through the smoke, but it didn’t matter. The whites of Aziraphale’s blue eyes had gone red with inflammation, and Crawly winced. If he’d have gotten here a few minutes earlier, if Julius had just _told him_ what he was going to do… but no, he was here now, and he was going to get Aziraphale out.

He thought first about trying for a quick demonic miracle, an easy spatial jump, but he didn’t trust his aim. There were a lot of ways that could go wrong. He’d never done it with anyone else before, and with his luck, he’d land them in the middle of Pompey’s burning fleet. Walking was a no-go, too; Aziraphale was heavy, and Crawly didn’t know the library well enough to know which ways out were closest or least likely to be blocked. Flying, though, was possibly doable. A firm _maybe_, but that was good enough.

So just as Aziraphale had done to him all those centuries ago in a city full of sin, Crawly pulled Aziraphale into his arms, unfurled his wings, and shot off the ground. He wasn’t as strong as Aziraphale (one of them had spent his life crafting stars, and the other had been designed to be a warrior), and Aziraphale weighed more than he did, so it took a moment or two and a near-miss with a charred column for Crawly to get them both stabilized.

Looking down, Crawly decided that the doors still weren’t an option. There were too many things in the way, too many sharp turns that Crawly wasn’t sure he’d be able to manage with Aziraphale’s limp body weight between his arms. Too many risks to be worthwhile.

The ceiling, however, _was_ an option. It was the only option, really, and while Crawly wasn’t overly fond of the idea of hurling his body back-first into a block of stone, that was what needed doing.

Crawly flapped toward the roof, shifting some of his energy away from the maintenance of his human form and hurling it at the limestone, willing it to become as soft as wood. He could feel the softness of the skin on his arms and torso give way to scales, could see the red-orange firelight reflected in the black mirrored pieces. His hair, too, was overcome by the horrid things, and his eyes lost the capacity to blink.

He’d never lost control this badly before. He looked terrifying, he was sure of it, but there was no one around to see him. No one but Aziraphale, whose blue eyes had slid shut and whose breathing was coming in short, ragged, almost useless bursts against the singed fabric of Crawly’s toga.

Hitting the ceiling _hurt_. Crawly ducked his scale-covered head the instant before his shoulders made contact, tucking it over Aziraphale’s curls and curling his wings around himself and the angel in his arms. He could feel the jagged edges of broken stone rip into the flesh of his shoulders and tear feathers free from his wings, and he cried out, mouth pressed into Aziraphale’s hair.

And then there was cooler air around him, and his wings spread themselves once again to keep him from falling. There were raw places on them, burned feathers and skin that would scar, but they still worked.

Heavy fingers twisted in the tattered remains of his clothes, and Crawly couldn’t help the choked-off sob of relief that got tangled up on his tongue. Aziraphale was moving, which meant that Aziraphale was alive.

There had been a fire, and Aziraphale had been in it, and he hadn’t died. Crawly hadn’t lost him, not again, not this time.

Crawly flew above the city, as monstrous and evil-looking as he could be, his hands pressed tight to the soft places under Aziraphale’s left arm and around his right waist. He was holding Aziraphale, and Aziraphale was clinging to him like he never wanted to let go. For the first time since the Fall, they were holding each other.

This stopped, of course, as soon as Crawly touched down on a rooftop on the other side of the city. Aziraphale stumbled out of his arms, crying out in pain when the burns on his feet came into contact with the stone beneath them. He fell backwards, blue eyes wide and still bloodshot, panic-locked on Crawly’s deformed features. His skin was too red and blistering in patches, and his breathing was uneven and interrupted by fits of coughing.

Crawly’s limbs felt like jelly, so he sat down with a heavy exhale. Aziraphale was still staring at him, seemingly unsure where to look. His eyes met Crawly’s for a split second every so often, but he didn’t speak.

Summoning forth what felt like the last of his energy, Crawly managed to force the yellow of his eyes back into human-like irises and make the scales on his head and face recede back beneath pale skin. His hands, arms, and torso stayed scaly in patches, but that was alright. There was no hope of fully human-looking, not when he was this exhausted, but he looked better. Passable, at the very least.

It seemed to calm Aziraphale a little. He was disoriented, his beautiful fingers scrabbling at the roof in distracted patterns, but he looked mildly less frightened than he had a moment ago.

“Hey,” Crawly said scratchily. “Hey, you’re okay.”

Aziraphale tried to speak, but all that came out was a hoarse croak. Fear flashed back into his eyes, and he brushed at his throat with soot-caked fingertips.

Without thinking, Crawly reached out and grabbed Aziraphale’s hands, pulling and tugging until Aziraphale landed in a heap in his lap. He held Aziraphale to his chest with one arm, busying himself with brushing ash out of once-white curls as he began to talk.

“It’s okay, angel. It’s fine. I’ll fix it, okay? Just… just let me rest for a moment, and I’ll fix it. I can help.” Aziraphale squirmed, burying his face in the front of Crawly’s toga, and Crawly’s heart flung itself against his ribs. “Shhh, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Aziraphale coughed again, and this time Crawly could feel him struggling to draw another breath.

“Angel. Aziraphale, lo-” No, not that. Not that word, never that word. “I’m gonna try to make it better, yeah? Let me, let me make it better.” The angel in his arms was wriggling around like he was trying to burrow into Crawly’s chest, and Crawly wanted to let him. Maybe there, he’d be safe. Maybe there, Crawly could stop him from being idiotic enough to nearly die in a fire because he wanted to save some damn books.

“Oi, angel,” Crawly said again, a bit sharper this time. “Hold still.”

Aziraphale shook his head. He was like a child, frightened and confused and looking for comfort, and so Crawly held him like one. Carefully, he wrapped his arm under Aziraphale’s calves, pulling all of that lovely softness toward him and settling it into his lap in a sort of cradle-hold.

And then slowly, very slowly, Crawly moved a shaky scale-covered hand down the front of Aziraphale’s neck and chest, willing the burns in his throat to heal and making the smoke that was trapped in his lungs disappear. Aziraphale squirmed again, kicked his legs, and Crawly wondered if he was doing more harm than good. Maybe angels couldn’t be healed by demons - why hadn’t he thought of that?

But Aziraphale stopped coughing, and he started taking in greedy lungfuls of clean night air. Crawly’s vision went spotty from some combination of relief and overexertion, so he levered himself down onto his back, hauling a still unresisting Aziraphale with him.

They lay like that for several long moments. Aziraphale’s head was pillowed on Crawly’s bony chest, his heavy body pressing Crawly’s against the roof.

It was a wonderful thing, that soft warm pressure. So familiar. So nice. Unconsciously, Crawly lowered his head and pressed his nose into Aziraphale’s soot-laden hair, feeling it tickle his nose and reminding himself that Aziraphale was _here_ and _not dead_ and _fine_.

But as with all good things, it was over too soon. Crawly could fucking _feel_ the moment that Aziraphale came back to himself and realized the extent of what was going on. His soft body went stiff, and his hands flew away from Crawly’s clothes like the cloth had bitten them.

“Crawly,” Aziraphale said, panic making the edges of that horrid name turn wobbly. He rolled off of Crawly’s chest, wincing when his burned skin collided once more with rough stone.“What… what’s happened?”

“You are a bloody idiot, that’s what the fuck happened.” Crawly’s body was cooling already, and he barely stopped himself from asking Aziraphale to come be close to him again. “You fucking stayed inside of a burning building until you were too sick and wounded to miracle yourself out.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened again. “The books! Did… what about the books?”

“Oh, sure,” Crawly drawled. “Right. Sorry, angel, but I was a bit too worried about getting you out of there to stop and think about the fucking books.”

“Right,” Aziraphale said slowly. “Of course.”

Crawly rolled his eyes. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” A tiny attempt at a smile curled at the corners of Aziraphale’s grey-coated lips.

Involuntarily, Crawly flinched, and Aziraphale’s eyes flashed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“_Crawly_.”

“Seriously, it’s nothing.”

Aziraphale was staring at him, the muscle in his jaw twitching beneath too-red skin. “Tell me you didn’t burn down the library.”

“_What_? No, of course not!”

“Tell me that you didn’t have anything to do with the fire, Crawly.” Aziraphale’s normally soft voice had grown barbs.

“I- look, it wasn’t my idea, he didn’t tell me he was going to light the ships on fire. He’s petty, wants to be in charge-”

“Who?”

Crawly wondered if angels were allowed to kill people who destroyed the things they loved. Aziraphale certainly looked like he was thinking about it.

“Roman bloke. Name’s Julius Caesar.”

“I’ve heard of him, yes.” There was something else in Aziraphale’s voice now, something that looked to be made of brick and mortar. “A few years back, I heard that he had a red-haired friend who helped him make decisions. I thought of you, at first, but the sort of things that this man was said to have done didn’t really seem like your style.”

The words scraped Crawly’s ribs as they flew, sharp and steel and vicious, into his heart. Aziraphale had heard, then.

“It was a direct assignment,” Crawly said, immediately aware of how pathetic he sounded. “Couldn’t… couldn’t not go.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious, angel.”

“Fine, yes.”

Crawly started to reach for Azirapahle again, but this time, he stopped himself. The time for that had passed. Aziraphale had let Crawly touch him when he was too terrified and injured to think clearly. He wouldn’t want Crawly to do it now.

“Honestly, I didn’t even do much,” Crawly insisted, hating himself for the pleading sounds that had crept forward on his tongue. “He’s an ego-maniac. I see why my bosses like him.”

Aziraphale raised a skeptical eyebrow, cringing as the burned skin of his forehead crinkled. With a wave of his hand, the blisters vanished and his skin turned a slightly healthier shade of pink. A jug of water and a single cup appeared next to his thigh, and he poured himself a glass without ever breaking eye contact with Crawly.

_He’s doing miracles again,_ Crawly thought with a mental sigh of relief. _Good, yeah. Good._

“So you weren’t responsible for how he treated his wives, then. Or his brutality in Gaul.”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Not at all. I took credit for it - oh, don’t look at me like that, you know I do that to keep Downstairs off my back - but I didn’t make him do any of it.”

Aziraphale gave him another skeptical squint. “But he trusts you.”

“Yeah,” Crawly said. “I can act like an asshole, angel, but it doesn’t mean I am one.” And oh, he hadn’t really meant to say that. Didn’t really fit with the demonic image he was trying to portray (but then again, not too many of Crawly’s actions actually did, so what was the harm in one more slip-up?). But he couldn’t take it back, so he just sighed and did his best to act nonchalant.

Silently, Aziraphale miracled another cup and filled it with water, handing it to Crawly with a short nod.

In spite of everything, Crawly smiled at him and pushed himself back up until he was sitting again. He took a sip from the cup (had water always tasted this good?) and was beginning to mumble out a thank you when he heard Aziraphale’s breath catch.

“Oh dear.” Aziraphale was craning his neck, looking at something behind Crawly. “What- are you alright?”

“Eh?” Crawly looked over his shoulder with a wince. Oh, right. That. “It’s nothing, angel. I’ll fix it in a bit - gotta get some strength back first.”

But Aziraphale was already on his feet, stepping between Crawly’s wings with decisive gentleness.

“You healed my throat, didn’t you?”

“Mmm.” He hadn’t been sure that Aziraphale would remember that.

Aziraphale’s laugh sent electricity through Crawly’s bones. There would never be a day when he would not be wholly in love with that sound.

“How did you know it wouldn’t kill me?”

“Didn’t- _oi_, be careful!” Heavy fingers were working over the cuts in his wings, leaving behind an itchy tingling feeling that was not entirely comfortable but also not unbearable.

“Sorry about this,” Aziraphale said, and yanked a dark feather out of Crowley’s left wing.

“_Hey!_” The wing wrapped itself around Crawly’s front, moving away from Aziraphale’s touch.

“I did say sorry. That feather was useless, though - there are a few more, shall I…?” Aziraphale’s beautiful hands moved inwards, tearing open the already-ripped fabric over Crawly’s shoulder blades and healing the wounds there, too.

“G’head, I guess,” Crawly grumbled, trying desperately to ignore the warmth that was spreading through his cheeks and down his neck at the casually confident way Aziraphale was touching him. He hadn’t asked Aziraphale to do this, but here Aziraphale was, doing it.

There were a few more sharp tugs on his wings, and then Aziraphale moved back into his line of sight again.

“Better?”

“Much,” Crawly said with a twitch of his lips that was only a bit more smile than smirk. “Thanks, I guess.”

Aziraphale walked to the edge of the roof and sat down on it, his legs swinging freely over the edge. He was facing the sea, and Crawly knew that he was watching the last of the library collapse into sooty ruin.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Crawly tucked his wings away and lay back down, interlocking his fingers behind his head. He closed his eyes, concentrating on morphing the still serpentine pieces of his body back into human ones. Once, he heard Aziraphale sniff, and his heart clenched at his inability to do what he wanted. If he hadn’t Fallen, he could have kissed the tears off of Aziraphale’s cheeks, wrapped his arms around those soft hips and round belly, whispered reassurances into Aziraphale’s ear.

But he _had_ Fallen. He’d stopped being able to do any of that a very long time ago.

Unfortunately, Crawly had learned that not being able to do something doesn’t stop you from wanting to. His nightmares of Eve and Amos and Anah and the children in Mesopotamia who he hadn’t been able to save were proof enough of that.

At sunrise, Crawly moved over to the edge and sat next to Aziraphale, tucking his feet under his thighs.

“I didn’t say thank you,” Aziraphale said without moving. “I jumped right to anger. You saved me, and I didn’t even say thank you.”

It sounded like he was giving himself a mental kicking with steel-toed boots.

“You shouldn’t,” Crawly said quickly, and Aziraphale spun to look at him, a refutation ready on his lips. “Can’t have word getting back to anyone from Hell that I did that.”

“Still, I really ought to-“

“Really, angel. Wasn’t a big deal.”

“It _was_.”

“No,” Crawly insisted, a sufficient lie slithering into his mouth. “It wasn’t… I dunno, wasn’t out of the goodness of my heart or anything. Just repayment. For saving me in Sodom.”

“Oh. Right.”

“We’re even, yeah?”

“Quite.”

Crawly was thankful for whatever it was that kept Aziraphale from asking how he’d known where he was. That was the thing about his lies: sometimes they weren’t quite watertight. He was never sure whether Aziraphale noticed.

“So,” Aziraphale said, turning back to face the sea. “Will you go back to Caesar?”

“Nah. I’ll let him think that I died in the fire. Told him I knew someone in the library, and he thinks I’m rash and stupid, so he’ll figure that I ran in and didn’t come out.”

“You _are_ a bit rash and stupid,” Aziraphale said with a laugh that wrapped itself in tangled knots around Crawly’s insides.

“Oh, _I’m_ rash and stupid?”

“You did run into a burning building!”

“Yes, but _you_ stayed in one _after it caught fire_.”

Aziraphale laughed again. “I had a reason!”

“Books aren’t worth dying over, angel.”

“Clearly you’ve never read one,” Aziraphale retorted with a haughty sniff.

“Of course I haven’t.” _Only every single one you’ve told me about._

The conversation stopped there, resting in the comfortable silence that comes after laughter. With a sigh, Crawly leaned back on his elbows. He appeared to be enjoying the sunrise, which was a convenient cover story for enjoying the sight of something far more beautiful.

As the rising sun cast orange light over Alexandria, Crawly watched it catch in Aziraphale’s hair and light up the flecks of ash on his eyelashes. Just as it had on every occasion when Crawly had seen Aziraphale, a single thought floated out of the mayhem of his mind and landed in front of his eyes.

_You’re beautiful, and I love you._

That thought was always painful, and this time was no exception. But the pain had become a strange sort of comfort, really, because it was a reminder that some things never change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few theories about when the Library of Alexandria burned down. For the purposes of this story, I went with the most well-known: in the middle of his civil war with Pompey, Julius Caesar followed Pompey to Egypt. He was trapped in the harbor by Pompey’s fleet, a problem that solved by burning all of Pompey’s boats. The fire spread to some of the buildings nearest to the water, one of which was the library. 
> 
> Also, Caesar was an asshole. He was an ego-maniac (we’ve all heard the story about him being captured by pirates and demanding that they RAISE his ransom, right?) who wanted control at any cost. He had many consecutive wives, some of whom he only married for political gain in the first place. He also had a reputation for brutality in war that was extreme even by Roman standards (and these are the folks who invented crucifixion, a death so painful they had to make up a new word for it). Basically, no one was really all that shocked when he wound up being stabbed by his best friends.


	7. Rome, 41 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley tries oysters and basically adopts a ton of children. He also thinks about loving Aziraphale, as usual, and still doesn't do anything about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Sorry that I've been gone for a while! It wasn't a planned thing at all, but sometimes Life Happens and things have to shift around it. Regardless, though, I've managed to write the next chapter in this story, and I'm very excited to be able to share it with you! 
> 
> I think I'm going to ditch the Sunday posting schedule that I'd set up - having a deadline makes things less enjoyable, apparently, so I'll just be popping in to update whenever I finish a new chapter. 
> 
> Thank you for sticking it out, and thank you for any and all praise of this story that you've given thus far! It's been a challenge to write this, but it's been fun, and I'm looking forward to giving you all the happy ending you deserve in a few chapters. 
> 
> Warnings for language and mentions of slavery (because Ancient Rome).

Crowley made a face. The greyish slimy things sat in their shells, glistening in the light of the oil lamps. They _smelled_, too. Sort of like a fishier version of fish.

Across the table, Aziraphale gave a happy little hum and reached for a small pot of olive oil and herbs. He poured a little onto one of the oysters, poked at the place where the meat connected to the shell with a small knife, and handed it all over to Crowley.

“What do I do with this?” The herbed oil helped with the smell, but the thing still looked like it wasn’t quite dead yet. If Crowley was going to eat something that was alive, he wanted to be a snake to do it.

Aziraphale cocked his head. “Erm. Eat it?”

“Nh, I know that.” He looked down at it again. Still repulsively slimy. “How do I… how?”

“Just…” Aziraphale mimed a drinking motion. “Tip it into your mouth.”

Still eyeing the oyster like he was expecting it to grow legs and walk off, Crowley did as he was told.

Unsurprisingly, it was very slimy. Chewy and slightly grainy - was that _sand__?_ \- and so intensely fishy that the oil didn’t really do much to help at all. If Aziraphale hadn’t been there, Crowley probably would have spit it back into the shell and fired off a curse to prevent anyone from finding any oysters near the coastline for the next few centuries. But Aziraphale _was_ there, watching him chew with those damn big blue eyes, tracking the motion of Crowley’s lips and jaw (and _oh_, he’d looked at Crowley like that before, hadn’t he? Millenia ago, now. After they’d kissed, Aziraphale would watch Crowley’s mouth like that. Sometimes even before they’d kissed. It was most of the time, actually. Crowley had forgotten about that), so Crowley forced himself to swallow.

“Interesting,” he said after a moment. He’d had to make sure that the oyster was going to stay in his stomach before daring to open his mouth.

Aziraphale grinned at him and reached for the plate. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

“If you say so.”

“What, you didn’t like it?” Aziraphale sounded like Crowley had personally offended him, so Crowley threw his hands up by his shoulders, palms facing out and fingers spread wide.

“No, it’s not that I didn’t- look, it’s just that I don’t eat all that much, and I’m not overly fond of seafood when I do.” This was mostly a lie. Crowley actually didn’t mind seafood, and he’d eat a nice cut of fish if he had the chance, but it was a safer bet than admitting that he absolutely hated a thing that Aziraphale loved. The angel had made a trip to Rome just to try these oysters, after all.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, looking slightly crestfallen as he poked at his own oyster. “My apologies, Craw-_Crowley_. I didn’t realize.”

“I agreed to come. Wanted to give it a shot, see what all the fuss was about.”

“Well, now you know,” Aziraphale said, spilling some oil into the oyster shell.

And then he tipped it into his mouth and made a little humming sound that was, frankly, very rude. Not nice at all, making a happy noise like that. In public. Where anyone could hear. Where _Crowley_ couldhear. And over something slimy and foul-tasting, no less!

Briefly, Crowley considered that he’d done that whole eating-an-oyster thing wrong. Must’ve done, if Aziraphale was reacting like _that_. Must’ve missed something.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, eyebrows scrunching together in concern.

Right. He’d been staring, and it had been obvious enough that Aziraphale had been able to tell even without seeing his eyes.

“No, no. Just-” Crowley scrambled for something to say, some excuse to make, something other than _do you have any idea how beautiful you are_. “You’ve just, uh, got oil. On your chin.”

Aziraphale went adorably pink and wiped softly at his chin with the back of his hand. There had actually been a drop of oil there (nothing so significant as to warrant the amount of staring that Crowley had been doing, but Aziraphale didn’t need to know that), so when he drew his hand away, the skin on the edge of it was slightly shiny.

Crowley made a mental note to avoid eating meals with Aziraphale in the future. This wasn’t a sustainable thing, watching Aziraphale eat and make tiny pleased noises and not being able to do anything more than stare at him from behind dark-tinted glasses. He couldn’t do this again.

Aziraphale picked up another oyster, and Crowley found himself quite suddenly very interested in the wall.

“So,” Aziraphale said as he poked at the meat and dribbled oil over it. “You won’t be staying in Rome, then? You, ehm, ‘just nipped in for a quick temptation,’ yes?”

“Yeah, think so.” Crowley was actually toying with the idea of staying for a bit. Picking up where he’d left off a few decades earlier, re-establishing himself as a semi-private but high-class citizen here. He’d kept the villa, after all, and while it needed some serious renovating to be back in vogue, it wasn’t anything a few dozen demonic miracles couldn’t handle.

Across the table, Aziraphale made another humming noise, and Crowley chewed on the inside of his lip to keep himself from going off about how unfair this was. Mind on the matter at hand, right. Don’t think about his lips, don’t think about his hands in your hair, _don’t think about it._

“You?” Crowley managed to croak out after a moment, eyes still fixated on the wall behind Aziraphale’s head. He could still hear the angel eating, but no one said he had to watch.

“I thought I might set up camp here for a little while, actually,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully, setting down his second empty oyster shell and picking up yet another. This was torture of a degree that not even Hell could have invented, and Crowley resisted the urge to slam his head into the table.

“O-oh?”

“Well, you know. I’ve never actually spent much time here - you had your stint with Caesar all those years ago, but I’ve only ever passed through. So, I thought I might stay for a few years. Get settled, perform some blessings, travel when I’m asked.”

“Right,” said Crowley faintly. Monosyllables, yes. Those were good.

“Just the usual thing, really.”

“Mmm.”

Depending on how one looked at it, it was either extremely fortunate or extremely unfortunate that Crowley chose to look away from the wall when he did. He shifted his gaze back to Aziraphale at the exact moment that Aziraphale smiled at him. It was a small thing that just barely lifted the corners of his mouth, but Crowley still nearly melted into the floor. He’d really thought that he was getting better at this, had been sure that he was going to be able to be cool and nonchalant around Aziraphale for the rest of forever. But then Aziraphale had gone and invited him to get dinner, and he was sitting there with oil on his lips and bits of starlight in his eyes and a pink tinge to his cheeks (the way he looked when he was happy, like he’d always looked when he was happy, and it was killing Crowley), and Crowley was back in the hole he’d spent centuries climbing out of. Shovel in hand, no less.

“What about you, then? Where are you off to?”

_Nowhere,_ Crowley didn’t say. _Staying here, staying right here with you. Because of you._

“Dunno.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, finally regaining control of his tongue. “Might head east for a bit, might hang around a bit north of here. Could even pop over to the other continents - haven’t really been there at all, really, except for one or two special assignments.”

Crowley’s eyes fooled him into thinking that he saw a few sparks of light in Aziraphale’s eyes go dark. Someone had probably just turned off a lamp or something else ordinary and rational like that. Couldn’t go thinking that Aziraphale gave half a fuck about where Crowley was in the world, couldn’t let himself believe that maybe Aziraphale wanted him close just as badly as he wanted to be close. Dangerous things, those thoughts.

“That sounds lovely,” Aziraphale said gently, and then he smiled again, and Crowley’s stupid heart kicked him in the ribs.

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

Aziraphale returned his attention to the platter of oysters, so Crowley returned his attention to the wall. He tried to switch his thoughts around, forced himself to get back into the mindset of here-and-now-is-different-than-before that he’d been so carefully cultivating since the Flood. He started a list in his mind of things that he knew _this_ Aziraphale enjoyed in _this_ moment: white robes, not-so-subtle nods to his angelic nature (the metal wings that pinned up his toga were evidence enough of that), oysters, red wine cut with far more water than Crowley had ever had any desire to drink. Smiling, too. He’d become fonder of that in the eight years since Crowley had last seen him. Might’ve had something to do with Yeshua pulling off his own resurrection, might not. It didn’t matter why Aziraphale was smiling more so long as he was doing it.

And questions. Aziraphale had always been fond of those, and it looked like that much wasn’t ever going to change as long as there were things to ask questions about. Funny, really, that Crowley had Fallen for asking questions even though he’d never asked half as many as Aziraphle seemed to.

The sound of someone clearing their throat in an extremely prim and mildly annoyed manner reached Crowley’s ears, causing him to fall backwards out of his thoughts and land quite painfully on his metaphorical arse in reality. Aziraphale was staring at him, eyebrows raised in concern, one of the few remaining oysters balanced between his fingers.

“Crowley?” Going from his tone of voice, this wasn’t the first time Aziraphale had asked that particular question in recent moments. Still, something in Crowley’s dark soul brightened a little to hear Aziraphale use his new name, his chosen name, _his_ name without so much as a stutter or a hesitation. It was nice, this name. He liked hearing Aziraphale say it.

“Sorry. Went-” Crowley waved a hand in a wonky circle in the air, “-somewhere else. Did you say something?”

“Yes. I’ve been reading some poetry recently from a few centuries back, and I thought I’d recommend it to you. The poetess is quite masterful with language, you see, and so I thought you might appreciate her intellect.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “I don’t read, angel.”

“This is something different, though! Short poems are much more manageable than long epics, and as I’ve said, Sappho is quite good.”

The sip of wine that Crowley had just taken burned its way up his nose at the same time that his lungs seized up and refused to draw breath. The ensuing coughing fit cast a spray of wine droplets across the tabletop, and the inside of Crowley’s nose felt like someone had scrubbed it over with sandpaper, and… oh. Oh, oh, oh, and Aziraphale had gotten up from his side of the table and had come around and was rubbing Crowley’s back through his toga.

Crowley’s human body had a great many flaws and failings, and usually he didn’t like it when they presented themselves. At the current moment, though, he was exceedingly grateful that human faces flush red when the body is undergoing some kind of exertion (like, for instance, coughing so hard that everyone in the restaurant turns to see who’s dying). It gave him a cover story for the blush that was raging from the top of his forehead down to the middle of his chest. The blush was there, of course, because Aziraphale was touching him. Aziraphale was touching him voluntarily, pressing thick fingers to his back with a kind of tenderness that he’d never let himself imagine he would feel from Aziraphale again.

This wasn't an accidental brush of fingers around a cup or wineskin. This wasn’t a one-armed lift born from panic and fear in the rush to get out of a city that was doomed to burn. This wasn’t desperate child-like clinging on a rooftop after a rescue that almost didn’t work. No, this was something else. This was _kind_, and it was also completely unnecessary. Aziraphale had to know that he wasn’t actually doing anything to help, right? He had to know that Crowley’s stupid human body would sort itself out on its own, that this back-rubbing thing didn’t help someone stop choking. He had to know that, and yet he was still doing it.

Crowley stopped coughing after a moment or two and straightened up. Aziraphale’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, barely there and yet so heavy that Crowley’s whole heart crumpled under the weight of it.

“Goodness, Crowley, are you alright?” Crowley couldn’t see Aziraphale’s eyes, but he knew that they’d be greyer, darkened with concern. He could hear it in the up-pitch of Aziraphale’s voice, could feel it in the way Aziraphale’s thumb had started to make small circles at the place where his neck joined his shoulder.

Involuntarily, Crowley shivered, and Aziraphale’s hand was gone. His skin was on fire in the places Aziraphale had touched, and to his horror, he realized that he’d gone a bit scaly around the elbows. That particular quirk was probably never going to go away, but it didn’t mean he had to let it stick around for long when it showed up again. Stupid bloody snake form doing stupid bloody things to his stupid bloody human form.

Aziraphale was staring at him again, and this time Crowley could see the worry in his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t been wrong before, when he’d thought that Aziraphale had looked disappointed that he wouldn’t be staying in Rome. Maybe, possibly, Aziraphale actually gave a damn about what happened to him.

No time to think on that now, though, because Aziraphale’s concern was turning very quickly into all-out panic. Time to say something to calm him down. Time to lie.

“Hey, ‘m fine. Really. Just, uh, got a bit of wine down the windpipe.”_ Because you’re suggesting love poetry to me, and I really do not know what to do with that._ “It’s fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

Aziraphale’s shoulders sank back to a normal level (Crowley hadn’t noticed that they’d been up quite so high - the angel really had been worried over a bit of nothing, hadn’t he?), and he took a long drink from his cup of wine.

“You don’t have to live with all of that, you know,” Aziraphale said gently.

“All of what?”

“Coughing, choking. Other things, too - anything your human body does that you’re not overly fond of. You can probably turn it off.”

“Could do, maybe.”

“It can be nice, not having to worry about it.”

“You do it often, then?”

“On and off. Sometimes I like to live as humans do, you know. And sometimes it’s only appropriate to do so. But mostly I just keep the things I like, the parts of being in this body that I enjoy.”

Ah. Pleasurable things, then.

“Like tasting food?”

Aziraphale’s eyes brightened slightly. “Yes, rather. It’s quite brilliant, the things humans have started to do with food.”

“Mhmm,” Crowley grunted. If the oysters were anything to go by, he was fairly certain that he didn’t fancy trying any more of this variety of human brilliance. “So. This poetess you like. What’s the appeal of that kind of rubbish again?”

*********

Crowley, predictably, didn’t go east or north like he’d told Aziraphale he might. He didn’t go over to the western continents, either. Didn’t even go south to check out the beaches and try to pass off a few of humanity’s foulest deeds as his own ideas. He decided that those places would probably still be there in a few months or years, so what was the rush? Rome had plenty of opportunities for temptation. Plenty of new places to explore since he’d been here last.

Rome also had a beautiful angel with whom Crowley was completely besotted, but that wasn’t really all that significant. It certainly wasn’t the only reason he stayed. And the fact that said angel might actually have been coming to like him a bit wasn’t a factor in that decision-making, either. No. Definitely not.

And Crowley’s heart definitely didn’t do a complicated turning-inside-out maneuver when Aziraphale turned up at his doorstep (for the first time ever) in the middle of the night, either. And it certainly didn’t smash itself into the crevices between his ribs when he saw the red-hot rise of anger in Aziraphale’s cheeks. That would have been ridiculous (which, Crowley realized with a tiny flinch, he really rather was).

“Hey, angel.” His tone was cool and casual, eyes hidden away behind a slightly larger pair of dark glasses than he’d been wearing the night of oysters and intentional kind touches. Inside of his body, his organs seemed to have taken up dance lessons. “Been a while.”

Aziraphale’s eyes flashed navy. “It has, hasn’t it.”

It hadn’t. It had been an unusually short amount of time, really, by the standards of beings who’d been around for a few millennia. Two years, three months, and eighteen days. Not that Crowley was counting, of course.

“You didn’t write.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said with forced politeness, “I hadn’t exactly planned to see you just yet. I thought that twice in eight years was slightly on the edge of too conspicuous to be passable - just in case our head offices should decide to drop in, you know - and so I was planning to wait a little while.”

Crowley crafted his face into something that was halfway between a smirk and a sneer. If Aziraphale was going to be haughty and angry about something that he wasn’t even going to be bloody forthcoming about, then Crowley needed defenses. He was this Aziraphale’s enemy, after all, despite how often they pretended otherwise. Despite shared wine and public restaurants and valiant rescues. Despite Crowley loving him.

“Why the visit, then? Not that I don’t enjoy the pleasure of your company, of course,” Crowley said, deadpan.

His mangled heart dropped into his stomach. It was almost funny, really, how he had managed to turn the truth into something that sounded like a lie.

“When I was dining with a friend the other day, he told me about the strange red-haired man in the villa on the hill. He said that this man had twice as many slaves as any other single person in the city - save the Emperor, of course.”

“Mmm,” Crowley said. People had been bound to notice his presence at the markets at some point. He just hadn’t known that Aziraphale would be in touch with those people.

“Furthermore, he said that _every single one_ of those slaves are… are children.”

Crowley was beginning to think that this might be a very not-good situation.

“Yeah, and?”

Aziraphale’s nostrils flared, and his hands tightened into fists in his toga. “And I want to know why, Crowley.”

“It’s not what you think,” Crowley said, sarcastic facade dropping immediately. He was utterly ridiculous, soft and stupid and lovesick over someone who would never love him back, desperate to prove his goodness in some idiotic attempt to earn affection. “Really, it’s not.”

“They’re _children_, Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice had gone wobbly, and Crowley thought that he could see the beginnings of a tear in the corner of one of his blue eyes. “How can you- how can you _do_ this, keep these traders in business? Those men, they’re- they’re _monsters_.”

“Hey,” Crowley said, more urgently this time. “Hey, look, it’s not… it’s not what you-”

“Of course it is, Crowley, you’re a demon!”

The words hit him like a one-two punch to the chest. _“Still a demon, then?”_ Yes. Still a demon, always a demon. Never anything else. A demon that Aziraphale cared about because Aziraphale cared about everyone, because Aziraphale saw the good in everyone even when there wasn’t supposed to be any to see. A demon that Aziraphale cared about because Aziraphale was Aziraphale, not because the demon himself was anything worth caring about.

“Right.”

“I just didn’t think that you would… I don’t know why I thought otherwise, really, you told me in Alexandria that it was just a favor, but you seemed… you seemed different.”

Crowley stared at him in silence. He watched as tears slid over Aziraphale’s soft cheeks, searched his brain for anything to say that could prove that the children in his home weren’t there to do what Aziraphale had assumed, that they weren’t slaves in the traditional sense.

“I suppose that I only wanted to believe that,” Aziraphale said after a moment, his watery voice cutting through the sea of Crowley’s fragmented thoughts and protests. “I’m terribly sorry for bothering you at this hour. I shouldn’t have come.”

The wires that connected Crowley’s brain to his mouth were frayed, so he stood with his mouth slightly open and watched Aziraphale turn away. If his hand hadn’t moved without his permission, he probably would have stood there until sunrise trying to string together a coherent response to someone who’d long since left.

But his hand _did_ move without his permission, and he grabbed Aziraphale firmly by the elbow, dragging him through the doorway and into the atrium. Aziraphale batted weakly at his hand, but Crowley only tightened his grip and pulled harder.

“Crowley, what are you doing? Let me go.”

“Gotta show you,” Crowley said sharply, forcing the words to slip between his lips. It was a fragmented sentence, a near-nothing explanation, but Aziraphale relaxed a little anyway.

Maybe there was some hope for something other than enemies after all.

Crowley slunk down the hallways with Aziraphale in tow. They passed one darkened doorway after another until they reached the far corner of the villa. A piece of cloth hung from the top of the doorframe, the quiet sounds of fabric rustling and heavy breathing brushing past it.

“What’s-” Aziraphale began talking at a normal volume, confusion laced through the single syllable that he got out before Crowley clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Shhh. You’ll wake them.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows crunched together, and the question of “Who?” was pressed into Crowley’s palm by too-soft, too-perfect lips.

_Don’t think about it,_ Crowley said, and he swallowed his hundredth-thousandth-millionth _I love you._

“Look.”

He took his hand away from Aziraphale’s mouth, fingers still hot from the touch, and pulled aside the cloth. The room on the other side was just as dark as the hallway, so he snapped upward with the other hand, a muffled click echoing off the walls. His finger ignited, and he held it out into the room.

“Stay back a bit,” he warned quietly, looking meaningfully from his flaming finger to Aziraphale and back again. “Could kill you, this stuff.”

Aziraphale made a soft sound, something close to an “Oh,” and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. Crowley wasn’t sure if he’d even heard the warning; those big blue eyes had gotten even wider, the color impossible to see in the dim firelight. And Aziraphale was smiling as he looked out over the room, showing a tiny bit more of his perfect teeth with every fraction of a second that passed.

Crowley had a lot of valuable things in his home. He collected them from merchants and artists, hung them on his walls and set them on tables, filled his whole life with them. But this room held the most value, the most pure treasure that Crowley had ever had the pleasure to see.

He’d filled it with children.

It was one of the great displeasures of Crowley’s life to find that humans were fond of enslaving other humans. It was an even greater displeasure to find that often, the humans who were enslaved were children. The last time he’d been in Rome, he’d had to do a lot to keep up the appearance of a rich man. He’d had to transform into a snobbish member of the Roman elite class, complete with slaves and gaudy ornaments and cruel sneers. He’d hated it, but it had been his job. Special assignment from Beelzebub and all.

This time, though, he’d done what he’d longed to do before. He bought every child slave he came across and brought them back to his villa. He’d given them a place to sleep and food to eat (he’d even learned to cook so that he could teach some of the older ones to do it, too), and he taught them to read when they were old enough. He asked them their names, and he learned every one. And he had set aside the largest room in the house and filled it with sleeping mats and clean robes and wash basins, made it a home for the children who'd been taken from theirs.

Crowley himself slept in a smaller room along the same corridor, half-awake at all hours in case one of them needed something. Sometimes the youngest ones would wake up in tears, crying for their mothers and fathers, and Crowley would run into the room and carry them out, cradling them against his chest. His hair was short, now, but when tiny hands were grabbing at his shoulders, reaching for long locks to tangle in, Crowley gave it to them. He would hold them until they stopped crying, tell them the stories of the gods and heroes that other Roman children learned, let them grow tired again in his arms. Other times, the older ones would creep into his room, eyes wide with the fear that one day Crowley would give them up, that he'd trade them to someone else who would treat them terribly. If they asked, Crowley would hold them, too. The doorway of Crowley's room saw many tight hugs and embraces that bordered so close to paternal that it was painful to think about, and many times he would walk them to the kitchen and tell them that he wasn't going to let them go until they were big enough to do it on their own.

And rarely, very rarely, when none of his usual tactics would work, Crowley would take the child by the hand and walk them outside. He'd tell them to look up, to find the stars they liked best, to point them out to him. Many of the stars had names given to them by astronomers over the past centuries, but Crowley never taught the children those names. He taught them the names that he had given them, the ones that the stars themselves knew. The right names, the ones that fit.

Because Crowley cared for the children himself, there wasn’t a single adult slave on the entire estate. Everything worked exactly as Crowley needed it to simply because he expected that it would, and so no real slaves were required. The children that Crowley bought never served him, and he never treated them like property. He just figured that they deserved better than that, better than humanity’s darkest depravity. He just thought that they might need someone to love them.

Another of Aziraphale's "Oh"s drifted into the room that held a few dozen sleeping children. With a small glance at Crowley, Aziraphale lifted his hands above his head, eyes sliding shut. His mouth moved silently, forming the words of a blessing that Crowley couldn’t hear.

When he was done, Aziraphale stepped back from the doorway and gave Crowley one of his small, reserved smiles. It wasn’t happy, exactly, but it wasn’t not, and that was good enough for now.

“Come on, angel,” Crowley whispered after a moment. “Fancy a cup of wine?”

“I rather think I would, yes,” Aziraphale said softly, and he followed Crowley down the hall.

They didn’t say much of anything for a while. Crowley had poured them both some wine from a jug that hadn’t been in his kitchen for longer than a few seconds (he had a house full of kids, which meant that he wasn’t about to leave alcohol lying around) and cut both cups with a decent amount of water. He hadn’t summoned it from nothing because Aziraphale would have been able to tell, so he’d stolen it with a quick miracle from the basement one of his more pretentious neighbors and made a mental note to put the theft down on his next report to Hell.

Aziraphale was sitting quietly, sipping at his wine with the speed of a man who had no desire to get drunk and who really had just needed something to do with his hands. He looked over at Crowley once every few minutes, tracing the lines of Crowley’s face with an unreadable expression before sighing into his cup with a puzzling sort of resignation.

Eventually, Aziraphale pushed his wine to the center of the table and folded his hands in the spot where it had been and said, “I suppose my question is the same as before.”

“Hmm?”

“Why? Why do all this?”

Crowley shrugged. “They don’t have anyone else.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. He sounded like his voice had gotten lost between confused and relieved, and neither he nor Crowley seemed to know what to make of it.

But that was fine, really. Because Aziraphale was sitting in Crowley’s kitchen drinking wine at four in the morning, and Crowley had shown him his secret, and that made the night seem a little more grey than black.


	8. Kells, 1006 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the Arrangement, a stolen book, and some talk about the stars and their maker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovely readers! I'm back on my update-whenever-I-finish-a-new-chapter schtick (I trialed writing ahead and sticking to schedule, and y'all saw how that went, so. Back to what works.)
> 
> I hope that all of you are having lovely days/afternoons/evenings. I love and appreciate all of you so very much!
> 
> A few quick things on this chapter: It's long, and it's got quite a few parts. Sorry. It also has to do with the Book of Kells, so if you know little to nothing about that, you're going to need some context. If you click the link that takes you to the end note, I've provided a brief synopsis (and the link to the Wikipedia page, if you're like me and super curious about things!). Also, I know that the book states that the Arrangement began around 1020, but there are literally ZERO important events in 1020, so. 1006 it is, for the purposes of this fic. 
> 
> Also, my usual warning for language should go here, as should a general "this is still sad but getting less so" advisory.

Crowley didn’t have much of what one would call a “work ethic” unless he decided to. His reports to Hell were essentially long catalogues of mild inconveniences punctuated by a few big-deal type sins that he had no hand in creating but took credit for nonetheless. Five millennia or so on Earth had taught him that special assignments from the big bosses Downstairs didn’t come along very often, and so he’d learned to live life with as little effort as possible. Sure, there was the occasional rescue of a lonely child or a certain angel who managed to get himself into a shocking number of near-discorporation situations, but that type of thing was different. It wasn’t really _work_, because work was never something that he wanted to do. Saving Aziraphale and helping children? Those were things that he never wanted to stop doing.

But things had changed somewhat over the past few centuries. Aziraphale had been asked to do some work at various Irish monasteries, and so starting in the seventh century, he’d been fairly occupied with that. He still wrote to Crowley from time to time, always letting Crowley know when he was moving to a new abbey and leaving a forwarding address. He’d told Crowley about a few of the Viking raids - the scene at Iona had been particularly bad, apparently - and warned him to stay out of the way of a few bands of Norsemen who had a tendency to leave no survivors.

Once, Aziraphale had even offered to give Crowley a room at the abbey if he wished to come for a visit. Crowley had read that particular letter so many times that he’d worn the vellum thin around the edges, had smudged the ink that formed the words of his favorite sentences.

_“It’s been some time since we’ve seen one another, and I find that I miss our meetings quite a lot. I’d never have thought that I would say that about one of the Fallen, but I’d be remiss not to say it now, for it is true. I do miss you. I miss our dinners, our chats, the shared experience of living longer than any other being on this planet. If you should like to come and stay for a while - as long as your schedule will permit, of course - I could make a room available to you. None of the brothers would have to know._

_“I hope that you are well, Crowley. Stay out of trouble, please, as much as you are able.”_

Crowley hadn’t gone to visit. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to go, because he had. No, the problem had been the monasteries themselves. Piles of stones that had been at one point or another sprinkled with holy water stacked on top of a plot of earth that some bishop had blessed made for a very bad place for a demon to walk into. It was practically a guarantee of immediate death.

So Crowley had written back and said thanks-but-no-thanks. And he’d said that he missed Aziraphale, too, that he was sorry that work had kept them from seeing one another for so long. He’d even promised to bring a bottle of good Italian wine whenever they next had the chance to sit down for a meal (which, despite promising himself in Rome that he wouldn’t dine with Aziraphale again, he’d actually come to tolerate. A few hundred years of Aziraphale’s love for food growing to be almost as great as his love for books meant that meals were a near-essential part of their meetings).

Crowley himself had become even fonder than he already had been of alcohol, and he’d gotten to like sleep as well. He especially liked to combine the two, because being absolutely sloshed was a decent guarantee that he wouldn’t have any nightmares about the Fall or dreams about stars or heart-wrenching memories of whispered _"my love"_s and _“my darling”_s and _“my only”_s. Dreams were, on the whole, simply not worth having. Even the ones that were closer to memories of things that had happened here on Earth were painful at the moment, because he only dreamed about two things that fit that description. The first was the people he’d lost, and the second was Aziraphale. He was tired of dreaming about Eve and Anah, tired of hearing them laugh and watching them smile and feeling the phantom touches of their hands on his skin. He was tired of remembering the way he’d placed stone after stone on top of Amos’s body, tired of waking up smiling from the memory of a hug from a man who’d been dead for thousands of years.

The most conflicting dreams were the ones about Aziraphale, and Crowley both dreaded them and looked forward to them the most. Sometimes he relived moments where Aziraphale had smiled at him, and sometimes he caught snippets of a conversation that he’d thought he’d forgotten, and those were good. Other times, though, the dreams were nothing but memories of all the times he’d looked at Aziraphale and thought _I love you._ Good dreams about Aziraphale were just as frequent as the bad ones, and so it would have made the most sense for Crowley to avoid dreaming altogether by sticking to his plan of getting shitfaced before falling asleep.

The problem with this plan was that Crowley hadn’t seen Aziraphale in a few hundred years. This was a problem because Crowley was Crowley, and he desperately _wanted_ to see Aziraphale, and so sometimes he slept without drinking so that he could. In the mornings that followed, he would lie in bed and think about the next time they’d be able to meet or re-read a book that Aziraphale had told him about a few centuries prior. And when it got to be too much, when his hurt outweighed the good, Crowley would find his way to a pub and drink for ten straight hours.

He knew it wasn’t a healthy way of dealing with things, but it was all he had. Besides, he was a demon, and demons typically didn’t have especially good coping mechanisms, so he sort of had an excuse.

So he’d been hanging around in the British Isles, staying close to Aziraphale without marking it too obvious that he was doing so, and he’d been drinking and napping and causing minor annoyances to the general public and taking credit for sins he had nothing to do with. It was a decent life, really, as far as a demon could have such a thing. He hadn’t heard from any of the Dukes of Hell since he’d finished his stint as the Black Knight (they’d sent him a commendation for murdering the most people in the span of a decade. He hadn’t killed anyone, of course, but _they_ didn’t know that), which meant that he was doing a good enough job of lying that no one was getting suspicious.

He was sitting in a dingy pub in a tiny unnamed Irish village that lay fifteen or so miles outside of the Abbey of Kells when he heard the shouting.

“Oi,” he barked at the barman, tapping his knuckles on the countertop. “Whazzat about, d’you think?”

“Haven’t the foggiest, mate.”

Crowley was inclined to ignore whatever-the-fuck was making the awful ruckus outside in the street. Wasn’t his business, really. Shitty beer was his business until Aziraphale sent him another letter. Might be years before that happened, which meant that his business was really _a lot_ of shitty beer.

One of the young men who’d been shouting slammed into the pub, something golden and far too beautiful for his grubby little hands hoisted above his head. He was grinning so wide that Crowley was afraid he’d crack his jaw, and some of his equally grubby cronies were whooping and cackling behind him.

The barman (Bryn, Crowley remembered hazily) stared at the boys, his mouth hanging open.

“Aodhan,” Bryn said shakily, “Where’n the hell did you get that?”

Evidently the bloke with the golden thing was Aodhan, because he shook the thing in the general direction of the bar and said, “Abbey.”

When he shook it, Crowley saw what it was, and he sobered up so quickly that he splashed miraculously-expelled beer down the front of his tunic.

It was a book. A book from the Abbey of Kells that was dressed in a gold-and-jewel-crusted cover, which meant that it was probably the same book that Aziraphale had been telling Crowley about for the better part of two centuries.

“C’mon, Bryn, grab us somethin’ to drink! We’re rich, and we’re celebratin’,” Aodhan said with another grin. The other boys cheered, and they passed the book around like it was some sort of trophy.

Bryn looked like he’d been considering saying something along the lines of a reprimand, but at the mention of money, he shrugged and started pouring foaming pints of beer.

_Real pillar of faith, this one,_ Crowley thought bitterly, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he slipped off the barstool and crossed to the table where Aodhan had placed the book.

“That’s quite the prize.”

Aodhan’s smile had seemed to be stuck on his face, but it faded when Crowley sat down at the table. Crowley wasn’t a particularly well-known figure in the village, so it wasn’t really a surprise, but he still raised an eyebrow when one of Aodhan’s calloused hands wrapped itself around the spine of the book.

“What’s it t’you if ‘t is or not?”

“Just wondering what you’d need a book for, that’s all,” Crowley said calmly, steepling his fingers on top of the table and fixing his eyes on each of the boys in turn. They couldn’t see his eyes, but he made sure that they could _feel_ them.

“Book doesn’t matter,” one of the other blokes grunted, laying a scrawny hand down on the book next to Aodhan’s. “Got gold on it ‘n stuff. That’s what for.”

“Right,” said Crowley. “So you don’t need the _book_, then. Just the cover.”

Aodhan made a sound like a growl and tightened his grip. “Nah, we need th’ book.”

“For what?”

At the bar, Bryn had gone silent and was watching the exchange with a mixture of fear and intrigue. Four full pints sat on the bartop, untouched by the members of Aodhan’s gang.

“Things,” Aodhan finally said, the corner of his mouth turning up in a sneer.

“Like?”

“Dunno. Abbey’s got lotsa books, what’s the harm in us havin’ this one?”

“Yeah,” said the skinny one to Aodhan’s right. “What’f we wanna read it, huh? You gonna stop us?”

“You can’t read,” Crowley laughed. “None of you can.”

It wasn’t exactly an insult so much as it was a statement of fact, but the men seemed to take offense to it anyway. They were on their feet in a matter of moments, hands reaching for things in their pockets (knives and other things of the sort, Crowley figured) as they surrounded Crowley from all sides.

“Y’might want to shut your fuckin’ mouth, _mate_, and get the hell outta here.”

Silently, Crowley reached up and hooked a finger around the bridge of his sunglasses. He looked directly at Aodhan and pulled them down to the end of his nose.

All of the color dropped out of Aodhan’s face. His hand flew away from the book like it had bitten him and wound up over his mouth, a frightened yelp worming its way between the gaps in his fingers.

It had been a while since Crowley had shown anyone his eyes. He’d been keeping them hidden from humans for most of the past thousand years - one too many women had fled in fear, one too many children had burst into tears, one too many people had called him what he was, and so he’d decided that it was time to do away with them. Put them behind small panes of smoke-darkened glass. Hide one kind of darkness with another.

Now, though, having yellow eyes and slitted pupils was an advantage. Usually, there was a little bit of his energy going towards keeping all of that golden color locked in a human-shaped iris, but he’d let that go for now. His eyes were snake-like from corner to corner, and when he smiled, he let his canine teeth slip into something a little sharper.

Without saying a word, Crowley reached across the table and picked up the book, feeling a little bit of warmth along the spine from where Aodhan’s hand had been. He kept smiling, kept looking at Aodhan with his inhuman eyes. Aodhan’s light eyes had been growing steadily wider, and the hand over his mouth was shaking so badly that Crowley could hear the near-silent sounds of fingers colliding with teeth.

The men who surrounded Crowley seemed to have picked up on the fact that something wasn’t quite right with his eyes and his teeth because when Crowley stood, no one moved to stop him.

“You stole this for the gold,” Crowley said, voice level and chillingly calm. “So I’m going to let you have it. But the pages aren’t yours. You don’t need them. They’re _mine_.”

Aodhan nodded, short jerky movements of his head that were made fragile by the quaking of his whole body.

_Aziraphale is going to kill me,_ Crowley thought fleetingly, and then he tore the cover off of the book and tossed it onto the table. Gold hit wood with a dull thunk, and Aodhan flinched away so hard that he fell backwards onto the floor. Crowley slid his glasses back up his nose, ran a hand through his hair, and turned toward the door with the pages of the book in his hand. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a silver coin that hadn’t been there, tossing it to a still-stunned Bryn as he walked out of the bar.

“Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen,” he called through the closing door.

A bit of fear served those bastards right, really. They’d stolen from his angel, taken the thing that Aziraphale had been slaving over since Iona. Aziraphale had never cared much for the cover - he’d written that it was a bit gaudy for his taste, really, but that it was fine enough - but the book itself was Aziraphale’s treasure.

Crowley flipped through it as he walked. He recognized Aziraphale’s neat lettering on some of the pages and traced the lines of a few illuminations with the tips of his fingers. It really was beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. He never really had before, but this was different. This was Aziraphale’s, and so it was beautiful by nature. Beauty begets beauty, and all that.

But it had been stolen by a band of common thieves, which meant that Aziraphale had kept it as human as he could. He hadn’t protected it with sigils or doused the pages in holy water to prevent the forces of Hell from getting their hands on it. Aziraphale had left it as it was, a pile of vellum and ink and glue and string, and he had let the humans who helped him make it take all the credit for it.

  
Aziraphale was getting sentimental in his old age. Crowley would have to remind him not to get too attached, not to fall too far in love with the world. Aziraphale had Heaven to go back to, after all, and nothing in the universe was worth losing _that_.

*********

Crowley had been on the hill for hours. The morning after the book had been stolen, he’d sent a short letter telling Aziraphale that the book was safe (minus the cover, but he’d promised to explain that in person) and giving him a day and location to pick it up. He’d gotten to the hill in the early hours of the morning, and it was now early afternoon. 

There was no sign of Aziraphale.

*********

Aziraphale arrived with no warning. A snap, a bend in the air, and then he was standing in front of Crowley, his pretty face pinched into a frown.

“Crow- oh. Hello.”

All of the air in Crowley’s lungs went stale, and his tongue grew three sizes in his mouth. Aziraphale was _here_, finally,_ right here_ with Crowley again. And fuck, fucking _damned fucking fuck_, Crowley’s dreams and memories hadn’t done him justice in the slightest. It was the difference between looking at the ocean and a picture of a wave that a child had drawn in the mud with a stick.

Aziraphale had, impossibly, gotten more beautiful over the past few centuries. His cloud-fluff curls were shorter now, wound tight and clean against his head. He was wearing a hooded grey robe, a belt of rough rope resting below the curve of his stomach. His eyes were startlingly blue even in the dim light of dusk, and he was beautiful, and Crowley loved him.

“Crowley?”

“Hngrl,” Crowley choked. “H-hi.”

“Where is it? Did you- do you have it?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, climbing to his feet and wiping his hands on his tunic. Sweet Someone, he wanted to hold Aziraphale. He hadn’t wanted to do that this badly since Eden. “Had to bury it. Would’ve looked odd if you’d’ve come back with it in perfect condition.”

Aziraphale looked like he was trying to decide whether to be touched or offended, so Crowley snapped his fingers and brought the pages out of the ground. He handed them to Aziraphale and tried to ignore the little horrified gasp that slipped past the angel’s lips.

“What _happened_ to it?” Plump fingers stroked over the places where Crowley had torn the pages free of their binding, caressing the lines of the letters and brushing away tiny clods of dirt that had clung to the book.

“Thieves from the village went looking for something to steal. Found that, took it without thinking. They wanted the cover - think they’ll sell the gold and gems and things.”

Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t seem entirely angry.

“And how did _you_ come by it?”

“Right place, right time, I guess. I was- well, I was drinking, and they came into the pub. Had the book, said they stole it from the Abbey, and I, dunno. Pieced it together.”

“From… from my letters?” Aziraphale sounded almost _touched_, the bastard, and Crowley couldn’t handle that. Too close to affection, too much like something he craved but couldn’t have.

“Look, angel, ‘s not that big a deal. Can’t be that many gold-covered books up in the Abbey, can there?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, all trace of irritation gone from his face and voice. His hands held the book like it was about to fall apart at the seams, but there was nothing but a dangerous blend of soft things swirling in his eyes. “There aren’t.”

“I let them keep the cover,” Crowley said weakly, dropping his gaze to his own feet. He couldn’t stand Aziraphale looking at him like that, not for this long. Not over something he’d done. It was funny, really, how a look like that was all he’d wanted for so long, but it was too much when it finally came along.

“I can see that.” There was something of a laugh there, and a shiver ran down Crowley’s spine.

“They needed the money, I think. I- I tore it off, left it for them. They didn’t need the book, they can’t read, so I thought I’d. Thought I’d give it back.”

When Aziraphale spoke again, it was a whisper. Hushed, quiet, full of awe, and only a single word.

“_Crowley_.”

Crowley looked up again at that, a sticky thing that tasted like hope clinging to the back of his throat. Aziraphale was still looking at him with all of that horrible, wonderful, terribly beautiful softness.

He was so beautiful here, standing in this dark dusklight, looking at Crowley like he mattered. Crowley loved him so much it hurt.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, a smile spreading over his lips.

“Don’t say that. ‘S nothing.”

“It’s _not_,” Aziraphale said, and for once, Crowley didn’t argue.

They stood there for a moment. Silence stretched between their mouths and ears like tangled strings spelling words neither knew how to say. This was a new thing, this open and mutual admiration. Aziraphale hadn’t come here with accusations, hadn’t jumped immediately to the worst possible conclusion. Things had changed, somehow, and Crowley was reeling from it.

Finally, Aziraphale looked away, and Crowley went back to staring at his shoes.

“I should get back to the abbey.”

“Mmm.”

“Tha- never mind. But you know, don’t you? That I meant it.”

Crowley’s blood ran hot and filled his cheeks, and he fumbled with a few nonsense syllables before he managed a “Yeah.”

“It’s, well, it’s good to see you, Crowley.”

And how could Crowley not look at him after that? How could he not look for any hint of insincerity?

How could he hold himself together when he found none?

“Mngh. Good to see you, too, angel.”

“I could-” Aziraphale cut himself off, searching the edges of Crowley’s face for something unnamed. “It’s foolish, actually. Don’t pay me any mind.”

“You could what?”

“Come back,” Aziraphale said in a rush, pinkness rising thick and lovely in his round cheeks. “Just. As I said to you in one of my letters, I _do_ miss you.”

Crowley thought that he could burn that letter now. He didn’t think his mind would ever stop replaying the way those four words sounded in Aziraphale’s musical voice. He was stuck with them, stuck with the cadence of _I **do** miss you_ as the soundtrack to the rest of his life.

“If. If you want, yeah.”

The little smile on Aziraphale’s face spread into a larger one. There was a hint of perfect teeth, the tiniest touch of pink tongue. It was there, and it was _real_, and so Crowley memorized it. Set aside a whole part of his brain for that smile.

“I rather would, yes.”

“G-good. Okay.”

“You’ll wait here?”

“I’ll wait here.”

And then Aziraphale was gone as suddenly as he’d appeared, off to return his book to the place it belonged. Back to somewhere Crowley couldn’t follow him, back behind holy walls.

Walls that Crowley would do his best to climb if Aziraphale asked, of course. Burns and possible death be damned.

*********

“I’ve been thinking,” Aziraphale said.

They were laying on their backs in the grass, hands close but not quite touching. Aziraphale was looking at the stars, and Crowley was looking at him, and it was a little bit more than nothing.

“Dangerous, that.”

“Oh, _really_ now.” Aziraphale’s voice held a touch of chastisement, but it was swallowed by the gentle laugh that followed. “I was _going_ to say, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about what you said to me in Wessex.”

_“So we’re both working very hard in damp places and just cancelling each other out?”_

_“Well, you could put it like that. It is a bit damp.”_

_“Be easier if we both stayed home.”_

“Oh,” Crowley said. “And?”

Aziraphale hummed a little and said, “It might be worth exploring some potential options. Compromises, perhaps, between the two of us.”

_“No! Absolutely not. I am shocked that you would even imply such a thing. We’re not having this conversation. Not another word.”_

Apparently, a bit of time apart was good for something.

“Right. Such as?”

There was the sound of rough fabric shifting against skin and earth, and Crowley knew that Aziraphale was nervous. He always got fidgety when he was nervous.

“You and I have the same type of power, I think. At least from what I’ve seen.”

“Mmhmm.” _Mine’s dark, and yours is light, but yeah. Yours is for good, mine is for evil. Not that it really makes a difference when it comes down to it. Same basic stock. _

“So I thought that…” He trailed off, and Crowley could make out the tightening of his jaw in the pale moonlight. “Well, perhaps we might discuss a way to make our work loads a bit lighter.”

He couldn’t even say it out loud, the poor bastard. No one from Upstairs or Down made a habit of checking up, but Aziraphale was still cautious about things. He couldn’t be heard saying anything particularly untoward, and he’d certainly already toed that line with _I **do** miss you_, so Crowley took pity on him.

“Like, say, if you did a few temptations and I did a few blessings.”

“Like that, yes,” Aziraphale said faintly. “Not that I’m- I’m not _condoning_ evildoing, you understand. I just… well, I was thinking that I might like to start a real collection of books at some point, like the library at the Abbey, but all my own. And I thought that perhaps I’d like a bit of time off now and again to get started on it.”

Crowley couldn’t help but grin at that.

“Sure, angel.”

“And not every time, mind you. Just, well, occasionally. When the need should arise, and when it’s convenient.”

“We won’t make a habit of it,” said Crowley, fully intending to make a habit of it.

“Of course not.”

“Just when we need to.”

“Obviously.”

Crowley kept on grinning. He could almost hear the fire-red blush raging its way across Aziraphale’s beautiful face, but he didn’t say anything. Aziraphale could be uncomfortable with this new arrangement. That was fine. The part that mattered was that he’d suggested it at all, because it meant that he trusted Crowley to perform blessings.

It seemed that Aziraphale didn’t really think of Crowley as much of a demon at all, even though he said it often enough. Crowley should probably have been insulted, but he didn’t have it in him to even try to be. Being a bad enough demon that an angel - the best angel, the most wonderful angel, the angel he loved more than the earth and the stars and his own soul - asked him to do something inherently Good was one of the crowning achievements of Crowley’s immortal life.

“I do still love the stars,” Aziraphale said suddenly, clearly itching for a change of topic.

Crowley flinched at the way the words fell from Aziraphale’s lips. He’d used the same tone, the same awed reverence, in a field like this one so many thousands of years ago. Crowley had gotten used to seeing the night sky since then, but the part of him that longed to play with burning gas and form constellations and be called a name that no one remembered ached at the sound of Aziraphale’s voice.

Time could pass, the earth could change, people could live and grow and die again and again and again, and Aziraphale would still love the stars. He just wouldn’t know that he’d loved the one who’d made them in the first place.

“I figured you might.”

Aziraphale laughed and tilted his head back a little more, moving it to exactly the right angle that the stars fell from the sky and landed in a jumble in his eyes. Crowley sucked in a breath, watched as his creations danced in the never-static eyes of the only thing he’d give up everything to have.

“You figured?”

“You loved them so much, back then. ‘Beauty for the sake of beauty,’ right?”

The laugh that was still spilling out of Aziraphale’s mouth died in an instant.

“Crowley, you- you remember that?”

“Of course,” Crowley said, because it was the closest thing to that desperate cry of _I love you, I’m in love with you_ that he could manage. It was a little too bold, maybe, that kind of truth without qualifying excuses, but he didn’t want to surround it with lies. He’d been lying for so long.

Aziraphale was quiet for a long while. He lay in place, completely still except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, letting the gentle night wind ruffle the edges of his robes and wind its way through his shortened curls.

When he spoke again, it was a question (as much of what he said often was).

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure,” Crowley said, reminding himself that he should keep breathing. Aziraphale had let him get away with a bit of the truth, and that was good. He hadn’t run, hadn’t been angry, and that was more than Crowley had dared to hope for.

“None of the other angels in Heaven made the stars. Someone must have made them, but they’re gone now, so they must have…” Aziraphale trailed off, uncertain, and Crowley’s heart stopped beating.

“Fallen,” Crowley finished quietly.

“Yes. I just don’t understand _how_.”

Hell-given anger rose in tongues of flame inside of Crowley’s chest, scorching the back of his throat as he forced himself to ask “What do you mean, _how_? Everyone who Fell, we all… we all did something unforgivable. Something so wrong it became evil.”

Something like asking too many questions, like listening to a rebellious angel with a magnetic voice and beautiful smile and dangerous ideas.

“But the one who did this -” Aziraphale waved his hand across the sky, painting an arc with his arm “- must have been brilliant. Genius, to do all of this.”

Crowley grunted in a way that he hoped sounded more nonchalant than pained. And then Aziraphale said something that froze his blood in his veins.

“I think they must have loved it very much. I can feel the love, looking at the stars, and I just. I don’t understand how the star maker could have Fallen, loving the stars like they did.”

“Falling isn’t simple, angel,” Crowley said, forcefully monotone while his heart lay ripped open and motionless in his chest. “Not all of us understand why we Fell, really, but we did. We all did, for one reason or another.”

“I suppose.”

“It’s not. It’s not a straightforward answer, Aziraphale. And I can’t- can’t speak for all of the Fallen, but I know that there are things that I miss, sometimes.”

For the first time in hours, Aziraphale stopped looking at the stars. His eyes were on Crowley’s in an instant, searching for answers behind smoked glasses and finding none.

“What things?”

“Hngh,” Crowley said, and inexplicably, Aziraphale reached for him. Aziraphale’s hand landed on his arm, heavy fingers squeezing lightly, stroking the freckled and hair-covered skin that was busy breaking into goosebumps.

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it, I didn’t mean to-”

“I can talk about it.” Aziraphale was touching him, comforting him, caring for him, and that made Crowley decide that he was strong enough.

He couldn’t tell Aziraphale everything, of course. He couldn’t even say half of it, not if he wanted Aziraphale to remain his friend. A dramatic confession wouldn’t seem real, wouldn’t feel true, and so Crowley swallowed down the speech that was crushing itself against the backs of his teeth.

_I am - I **was** \- StarMaker, and I fell because I asked questions I shouldn’t have been asking. I loved a fair-haired principality, and he loved me, and I miss him sometimes. I miss him even though he’s here, even though I can see him and talk to him and love him still. What do I miss about Heaven? I miss the love, Aziraphale. The Almighty’s, the host’s, and yours. I miss yours most of all._

Instead, he clenched his jaw and said, “I miss the feeling of loving things without feeling like I shouldn’t. I miss Love, even though I know I’ll never feel it again.”

Aziraphale’s hand slid down Crowley’s arm and locked around his skinny wrist. Aziraphale’s thumb was pressed against Crowley’s pinky, a sort of not-quite-but-almost hand hold. Something of comfort, something of empathy, something that made Crowley’s mangled heart start beating again.

“Do you know, Crowley, that they tell us that demons can’t love?”

Crowley laughed at that, a cruel high-pitched thing. If only Aziraphale knew how deeply and horribly and completely Crowley had loved him, how desperately he’d keep loving him and never stop.

“Do they, now.”

“I believed it, once.” Aziraphale was still looking at him, his hand still pressing warmth into Crowley’s cold skin. “But not anymore. I couldn’t, now, not if I tried.”

“Why?” Crowley asked, even though he had the sinking feeling that he knew exactly what the answer would be. Maybe Aziraphale _did_ know. Maybe he knew, and maybe he just didn’t want Crowley’s fucked-up kind of love.

“You,” Aziraphale whispered like he was afraid of being heard even though he had apparently decided to throw his usually carefully preserved caution to the wind.

Crowley’s stomach filled with stones.

“W- Aziraphale, what are you on about?”

“_Don’t_, Crowley. Don’t do that.”

So he _did_ know, then. Fuck.

“I’m sorr-” Crowley started, but Aziraphale cut him off.

“And don’t you _dare _apologize. You’ve shown me how much you love the humans, Crowley. Especially the children. You’d do almost anything to keep them safe, wouldn’t you?”

_Oh_. Okay. Okay.

“Yeah.”

Aziraphale smiled at him, a brilliant beautiful thing, and squeezed his wrist once before letting go.

“You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t love them.”

“Guess not.” Crowley’s voice was thin and shaking, but it was getting stronger.

“So you see why I can’t for one moment believe that demons are incapable of loving, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“The problem with _that_ is,” Aziraphale whispered, looking over his shoulder as if he thought he’d find Gabriel or Michael standing behind him, “that it means Heaven has lied. At least once, Heaven has lied.”

That sounded horrifyingly close to the train of thought that Crowley had once entertained, back when he’d been an archangel who dressed in white and spent his days spinning life-giving things out of something that otherwise might have been destructive. It sounded like doubt, like the sort of thing that he and a thousand other angels had Fallen for thinking, and Crowley panicked.

“_Stop_. You can’t- you shouldn’t say that. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. They probably didn’t know. Or maybe it’s just me who’s like this. I don’t know.” It was deeply ironic in a profoundly un-funny way that he was defending Heaven’s lies by lying. “Just- just you can’t doubt Heaven, angel. You can’t. You could Fall, and you can’t Fall. You’re the best of them.”

Aziraphale sighed, but he nodded, and Crowley felt his lungs fill with air once more.

“It’s all a part of the Great Plan, I suppose,” Aziraphale said, turning back toward the stars. “And the Great Plan is-”

“Ineffable.”

A little laugh rang out across the hills, and Aziraphale smiled at the sky.

“Precisely. I suppose if I understood it, it wouldn’t be the Great Plan after all.”

“Prolly not,” Crowley said, and in spite of himself, he smiled. Aziraphale was still here, still an angel, still okay. It wasn’t that he would have stopped loving Aziraphale if he _had_ fallen - it would have made some things easier, even. He could have told Aziraphale the stories of their love before the Fall, told him the things he’d forgotten. He might have even been able to kiss Aziraphale again, if Aziraphale had Fallen for his doubt.

But he’d been telling the truth about Aziraphale being the best of the angels. He belonged in Heaven, even if he was a little too in love with books and food and wine. Aziraphale was _good_, and Crowley didn’t want to think about what he would have to endure if he Fell. If he lost his name, if his white wings burned and turned to black. If he felt the pain of knowing that Love existed and that he’d chosen to lose it.

No. Crowley wouldn’t let him Fall, not like this. Aziraphale wouldn’t Fall if Crowley had anything to say about it. Crowley would shove him back onto the ledge of Heaven as many times as it took for him to stay there. He would protect Aziraphale, save him, even if it cost him everything. Even though it meant that Aziraphale would never know that Crowley loved him, even though Crowley would never kiss him again.

It was worth it, worth teaching himself again what he’d already known, if it meant that Aziraphale would be safe. Crowley could do anything, _would _do anything, if he could keep Aziraphale out of Hell’s grip.

Aziraphale, this Aziraphale, happy and safe. That was all that Crowley wanted. He didn’t _want_ Aziraphale to love him back, not if it meant that he would stop being safe. Not if Falling was the price.

_You,_ Crowley thought in Aziraphale’s direction, memorizing the way the moon and starlight caught on the high swells of his cheeks, _safe and happy. I want that so much more than I’ve ever wanted anything._

That thought was followed almost immediately by another, warm but hollow in its familiarity.

_You’re beautiful, and I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Let's talk about Church things and art things, shall we? (I'm exceedingly nerdy about both, for what it's worth.) 
> 
> The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript that was created by Catholic monks in Ireland during the 9th, 10th, and 11th (? there's some debate over this. Go with it for the sake of this story) centuries. It's called the Book of Kells, but there is some speculation that it was actually started on the island of Iona but removed before Iona was destroyed during a Viking raid. 
> 
> There is a record written in 1007 AD that states that the book was stolen from the Abbey at Kells and recovered a few weeks later. It had been buried, and when it was found, it was missing its cover, which is described as being covered in gold and gems. 
> 
> That's essentially all that you need to know about it for the purposes of this story, but I promised to link more info for the curious ones among you, and I will do that! [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells) is the link to the Wikipedia page, and [here](https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/works/hm50tr726?locale=en) is the Book of Kells today!


	9. London, 1348 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plague hits England, and Crowley struggles with his demonic nature. Also, a child who needs a father finds one. 
> 
> (Tune in next chapter for more "Hope Is Bad At Summaries")
> 
> Edited May 19 to say that there is now a summary of this chapter minus the plague bits on my Tumblr [here](https://hope-inthedark.tumblr.com/post/618531268770054145/in-light-of-current-events-ive-decided-to-put-up).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm back with more sadness, but also there's a tender moment between the fellas. Who knows. It's a thing, and it's here, and uh. Yep. 
> 
> As always with this fic, I did quite a bit of research on the history of this time period in order to learn more about the plague. Unfortunately, not all of what's written is entirely accurate - nothing diverges too far from the truth, but I had to make some minor historical jumps in order to make things make sense. 
> 
> Some warning notes about this chapter: as I mentioned, the first part of this chapter is about the plague, so there are some pretty intense descriptions of death and illness, including nightmares that feature people Crowley cares about. Also, a character does die, so heads up for that as well. And, as always, a lot of foul language. *Lots* of f-bombs in this one, pals.
> 
> [EDIT MAY 19: This was in the chapter summary as well, but I'm putting it here too just in case you missed it. There is now a summary of this chapter minus the plague bits on my Tumblr [here](https://hope-inthedark.tumblr.com/post/618531268770054145/in-light-of-current-events-ive-decided-to-put-up). Please stay safe, friends.]

Pestilence had caused a great number of contagious illnesses in their day, but this was their magnum opus.

This was something that Crowley had never seen before. When it had first come to London, Crowley had hoped that the reports from the mainland were exaggerated. He’d turned his sharp-angled face to Heaven, gritted his teeth, and prayed that it wouldn’t be as bad as he’d heard.

He cursed the Almighty for an hour straight when he realized it was worse.

The plague moved indiscriminately from home to home, carried through the streets by people already ravaged with it and the doctors who were fighting to treat it. It was a losing battle fought by men in dark robes and cone-shaped masks, men who were armed with nothing but weak medicines and quickly fading hopes.

Outside of the city, bodies lay haphazardly on top of one another in massive unmarked graves. They were thrown there by people who were dying themselves, coughing blood on top of bodies already covered in it. Once, Crowley saw a man drop dead on his way to move more corpses off of the cart, and he watched as another man dragged his body to the pit.

The stench of dried blood and rotting flesh mixed with the already-awful smells of the city to form a death-scented perfume that drifted through the streets. The spaces between waves of putrid vapors were filled with the final gasping breaths of the sick and the wails of those left behind, and Crowley hated it. He hated it more than he’d ever hated Hell, hated the way his hands twitched in the direction of people who needed help, hated that he couldn’t get away with giving it to this many people. His bosses didn’t usually check up, but there wasn’t really a way to spin this one in his favor, and it would have been a big enough use of his energy that someone Below would have noticed.

He didn’t go out much after the first month. Staying shut inside his little flat was preferable to being in the thick of things, easier than seeing the horror and hearing the screams. It was impossible to forget what was outside his window and on the other side of his walls, of course, but being away from it helped a bit.

Sometimes (every day, multiple times), Crowley wondered where Aziraphale was. When the plague had first broken out in a village near the southern coast, Aziraphale had sent a letter to let Crowley know that he’d be traveling for the foreseeable future as a doctor and would be out of touch for a while. At first, Crowley had been fine with that. He’d known that Aziraphale would be okay, had reassured himself that if _he_ couldn’t get sick, Aziraphale couldn’t either.

Inevitably, though, the darkness that was woven into the fabric of his very essence had gotten a grip on him. A new nightmare had made its way into his mind, crawled in through the cracks in his soul and reared its head on the rare nights when he went to bed sober. The setting changed, but the core of the dream was always the same. A pale-skinned, white-haired body lay on top of a pile of countless nameless-faceless others, dressed in the dark robes of a doctor, blood dried dark and rusty on beautiful lips.

It was always silent, too. Too quiet to be real, a trick that Crowley’s mind played on him to emphasize the absence of a certain laugh, the lack of sweet-sounding words and tiny little hums. A world without Aziraphale, soundless and bleak, devoid of every color that had made it beautiful.

Crowley always awoke from that dream with a sheen of sweat on his skin, his eyes fully golden and a whimper caught between his tongue and teeth. He would stumble out of bed, legs threatening to give out as they carried him toward the mirror that hung on his wall. Through lips that were shaking, with a tongue that had two points instead of one, against the part of him that wanted to despair, Crowley talked himself down from his panic.

“Aziraphale’s fine,” he repeatedly made himself say. “He can’t die from human illnesses - discorporate, _maybe_, if he really doesn’t try to save himself, but he can’t actually _die_. He’s an angel. He’s smart, too, and you know that he knows what he’s doing. And he’ll be back soon. Any day now, he’ll be back. There’ll be a letter tomorrow.”

Most of the time, that worked. Most of the time, that was enough. But sometimes it wasn’t, and on those mornings, Crowley told himself the only thing that could force air back into his lungs. It was almost certainly a lie, but somehow, it helped.

“Aziraphale wouldn’t leave you.”

Even after he’d faced himself in the mirror, there was always a little piece of his heart that doubted. If Aziraphale _had_ died, he wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t ever know. He wouldn’t know which grave to find him in, which town to visit. He wouldn’t know where his love was buried.

He also knew that it wouldn’t matter. If it came to it, he would walk the whole of England and leave flowers at every dirt-covered pit of bodies. He would keep loving Aziraphale, keep caring for him, because he didn’t know how to live without doing that.

Aziraphale, safe and happy. That was a dream that had shattered in the wake of Pestilence’s greatest masterpiece, something that Crowley could hardly dare to hope for anymore. Not now, not in a place like this. Not when he could be certain that it couldn’t be true.

Crowley stayed out of the world for four months, and he would have remained that way had he not walked into his sitting room one morning to find a frog crouched on the arm of his favorite chair.

“Duke Hastur.”

_“Hello, Crowley.”_ It was always a little unsettling, the whole project-my-voice-into-your-head thing that Hastur was so fond of doing.

“What can I do for you?” Crowley asked, walking over to a cabinet and removing a half-full bottle of whisky.

_“You’re behind on your reports, and I’m getting questions about why that might be.”_

Fuck.

“Right, yeah. Sorry. Been, erm, a bit busy.”

The frog blinked at him doubtfully.

“I’ll get right on it. I swear to Satan.”

Crowley had seen Hastur smile a few times, but it never ceased to be creepy. The frog was clearly grinning at him, but sadistic pleasure had taken the place of joy.

_“I expect one by tomorrow,”_ Hastur said, and he disappeared in a puff of yellow smoke.

Crowley yanked the cork out of the bottle in his hand and threw it across the room. He poured the entire half-liter of bitter liquid down his throat, smashed the empty bottle against the wall, and unlatched his door for the first time in over a hundred days.

He made it three blocks before he realized that the warm liquid running down the side of his hand was blood. A strange laugh bubbled up out of his alcohol-burned throat as he fished out the piece of broken glass from where it had lodged itself in his palm. He flicked it into a gutter, still laughing at his own idiocy, and continued to walk.

He owed Hell five months’ worth of temptations in twenty-four hours. There weren’t enough sinners left alive in this city for him to take credit for, which meant that he would have to do a fair amount of real work to make up for it.

A young boy with a hollow face was standing in the shadows of a building, fidgeting as he looked down at the body of an older man. Crowley could tell that the boy was debating whether to steal whatever valuables were still in the pockets of the corpse, and he could also tell that the kid was about to decide not to.

Crowley met his eyes, smiled, and gave him the push that he needed to do it. Shyly, the boy looked away, bending over the body as soon as he thought that Crowley was out of view.

It would scar the child for life, probably, the feeling of that man’s lifelessly stiff body under his fingers. He’d have nightmares about it, would feel guilty until the day he died, and Crowley had done that to him.

Crowley barely managed to make it to the next alleyway before emptying the contents of his stomach against the wall.

“My life,” Crowley muttered to himself as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “is a fucking comedy. I’m a being _made of evil_ who gets sick from doing it. I’m a bloody fucking comedian.”

He straightened up after a few moments, smoothing out the lines in his tunic as he walked back into the main street. One temptation down, a few hundred more to go.

*********

He’d found Anna in the cold arms of her dead mother. She’d been crying, screaming in the way that only frightened infants can, and it had sent chills down Crowley’s spine.

When he’d walked over to her, she had wriggled a bit and reached up, her tiny hands spread wide, grabbing at the air below his chest.

“Da,” she said, and Crowley felt his heart turn backwards in his chest.

He really didn’t have any choice but to take her, did he? And it wasn’t his fault that she refused to let go of him when he tried to put her in a blanket-filled basket that he was planning to leave on the street corner by the church. It was also entirely an accident, her falling asleep against his chest.

When you looked at it the right way, Crowley had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Anna became his daughter. He gave her a name, sure, but that was just so that he had something to call her other than “you” when he spoke to her and “the little one” when he spoke to other people. And okay, he fed her, but that was because he couldn’t let her starve while he tried to find someone healthy to adopt her. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried asking around, either; he _had_, but the plague had the nasty habit of knocking out any potential parents.

It wasn’t on him, the fact that he became a father. Not at all.

*********

Anna was sitting on Crowley’s shoulders, gasping her way through a stream of giggles as he bounced on the soles of his feet. It had been two years since he’d found her - since _she’d_ found _him_, really - and the plague had left London, moving on to wreak havoc on other cities. Two years since Anna had wormed her way into his heart with round blue eyes and tiny fingers and a fragile heartbeat. Two years of Crowley learning how to be a father. Two years of his long fingers brushing through her fair hair, plaiting it in a way that he’d learned from two other small girls who’d lived in a city that had burned.

She was laughing, her little hands twisting in his hair in a way that was just short of painful, and he loved her. He loved that she trusted him to lift her up high and not let her fall, loved that she could cling to him and not worry that he’d tell her to stop. Her tiny giggle made the inside of his heart twist and tighten, and he found himself wishing that he could do this forever. Just be here, in this house in this tiny town, bouncing around his kitchen and making his daughter laugh.

He couldn’t, though. That sort of happy ending wasn’t in the cards for him. What was in the cards was a tiny miracle to make Anna sleep for an hour so that he could go out and find something bad to take credit for.

It really wouldn’t do to have the bosses checking up on him with Anna around, so he was being extra diligent about his reports. Double-checking spelling, formatting, everything. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to Anna if he missed a step, if his report was a millisecond too late, if he wasn’t doing enough to satisfy Hell, so he was doing the best work he’d done in five thousand years.

“Anna, darling,” Crowley said, slowing his steps to his normal saunter and reaching behind his head to pull her off of his shoulders, “it’s time for a nap, isn’t it?”

She yawned because he wanted her to, rubbed her eyes because something he’d done told her that she should. The guilt that always came along with doing this filled the spaces in Crowley’s chest, heavy like stones, stiff like corpses. It wasn’t right, using a curse on his own daughter, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. He was keeping her safe.

Safe and happy. Those two words applied to someone besides Aziraphale, now, and Crowley was anchored to his desperate hope that he could make them true.

Crowley cradled Anna in his arms and walked to the bedroom. Her eyes were closing, heavy with sleep for reasons entirely in Crowley’s control, but she was smiling up at him. That was one of the things that he loved most about her: unless she was upset, she was always smiling. When he woke her in the mornings, she grinned at him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She smiled at strangers, too, and she would dissolve into her perfectly squeaky laugh when they smiled back.

By all rights, Anna shouldn’t have been a happy child. Demons shouldn’t have been able to raise happy human children. It should have been impossible, should have gone against something integral to the nature of human existence. And yet, Anna loved to smile. She smiled at Crowley like he was the best thing in the entire world, and he always smiled back at her and told her that he loved her.

“Sleep well, my girl.” Crowley kissed her on the forehead first, and then he moved his mouth next to her little ear and said, “Da loves you.”

When he left the room, Anna was still smiling. He thought of her when he walked away from the scene of a robbery, thought of her happiness and safety as he added another line to his memo to Hell. It was easier to claim responsibility for evil when he was doing it for someone good.

*********

Anna asked about his eyes when she was five. She’d seen enough people to know that most people didn’t have eyes like that, and so she looked at him one night over dinner and asked why his looked that way. He’d promised himself that he’d never lie to her if he could help it, and so he told her a piece of the truth. It hadn’t been a complete picture, but it was enough that she understood.

“You’re not like me,” she said, and she smiled at him. “Okay.”

*********

When she was eight, she caught some sort of virus from one of the children who lived down the road. She’d been sick before, and Crowley had always performed a few miracles to make it easier without shielding her from it altogether. But this time, she was in bed for a week, and nothing that Crowley tried seemed to help much at all. He thought about sending for Aziraphale on the third night of fever and tears (the angel was somewhere in northern France, but for some reason Crowley thought that he’d come if Crowley asked him to), but he decided against it. Instead, he crawled into the bed and pulled Anna into his arms, lowering his body temperature as much as he could. He held her for the next two days, setting her down only to go get her some water or food and pushing as much healing energy toward her as he could manage.

She spent most of her time in a restless sleep, wriggling in his arms and crying out in pain. He didn’t so much as blink until she was up on her feet again, walking and laughing and begging to go outside.

Anna hadn’t died, then, but she could have. Crowley could have lost her, and the thought tore slashes through his heart and poked holes in his lungs.

He lived a half-life for a while after that. He never ate until she did, never went to bed until she was halfway to dreamland. He checked her heartbeat a few times a day, and he watched for any sign that she was feeling ill again. His life was a series of worries-resolved, a constant cycle of panic and peace that consumed his days for months on end.

Sleep still didn’t come without its share of nightmares, and after Anna’s illness, they shifted to feature two corpses instead of one. Aziraphale and Anna, lying together in a myriad of places. Aziraphale was always solemn-faced and often blood-soaked, but Anna never was. She was always clean and perfect, her hair in two plaits that Crowley could tell he’d done, and she was always smiling. Crowley would wake from those dreams and run down the hall to her room, standing in the doorway until his ears filled with the sounds of her breathing.

*********

Anna was nearly twenty when Crowley got a letter from Aziraphale that included a request to meet and share a meal. It was the first time since the plague had come that Aziraphale had asked to see him, and it was also the first time that Crowley almost didn’t go.

“You _have_ to see him.”

“I really don’t, darling,” Crowley said, surprising himself with how much he meant it. “He’ll ask again in a few years, I’m sure. You might be married by then, if you want to be.”

“But what if I’m not? You’ll say no again?”

“Of course. You’re my responsibility - you're my _priority_, and you know that.”

She laughed at him, the same body-shaking giggle that she’d had from childhood.

“Don’t be stupid, Da.” He loved that she still called him that, adored the fact that she hadn’t dropped the name that she didn’t even remember giving him. “You’ve been telling me about him for as long as I can remember. I won’t be the reason you stop yourself from seeing him.”

“Anna, sweetheart,” Crowley started to protest, but she laughed again and narrowed her eyes at him.

“_Go_.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Yeah, Da. You do.”

So Crowley did.

The first thing that he noticed upon arriving at the tavern was that Aziraphale looked _terrible_. Well, he looked beautiful, but he also looked like he was moments away from fainting. His already pale skin was too white, and the curves of his face and body that had been there for as long as Crowley could remember weren’t quite as round as they always had been. After a moment of concerned study, Crowley realized that there hadn’t been any changes to the shape of Aziraphale’s actual corporation; he just looked _harder_. Whatever he’d seen over the past decades had mangled some part of his soul, and a piece of Crowley’s heart shriveled up at the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to help.

“Angel,” Crowley said, folding his body into the chair across the table from Aziraphale.

Aziraphale looked up at him and made an attempt at a smile, a small thing that flashed over his lips for just long enough to be visible.

“Hello, Crowley.”

“How- how are you?” Crowley knew it was a stupid question as soon as he asked it, but much as he wanted to, he couldn’t take it back.

“Truth be told, I’ve been better.”

“Right,” said Crowley faintly, wishing very much that he could melt into the floor. Technically speaking, he _could_ do that, but he had a feeling that Aziraphale wouldn’t like it very much, so he stayed put. “You’ve been- right.”

Aziraphale’s lower lip wobbled as he raised a hand to attract the attention of the serving boy. “Tending to the victims of the plague, yes.”

“It’s. Um. It’s pretty brutal. I was in London when it hit there, and I…” Crowley trailed off, shaking his head to clear the images of bloodied bodies from his mind and the sounds of the last breaths of the dying from his ears. “I had to leave. Couldn’t, um, stick around.”

It was a half-truth. The reason had been Anna - getting her out of the city to somewhere comfortably remote had been Crowley’s only concern - but he’d been relieved to have an excuse to go. Plague-ravaged London had been a nightmare wrapped in screams, and Crowley couldn’t leave fast enough.

“I don’t blame you.” Aziraphale’s words were swallowed by a laugh that was really a ghost of one. “I’ve thought about stepping away from it all more times than I care to admit. But they need help, and I can give it to them.”

_You shouldn’t have to,_ Crowley thought, flicking his eyes Heavenward and clenching his jaw to hide the sneer that was fighting to curl his lips. _This fucking plague shouldn’t even fucking be here. They could stop it, if they wanted to. I know they’ve got angels up there who could stop this. Blink of an eye, quick reprimand to our dickhead colleague Pestilence, done. You shouldn’t have to be doing what you’re doing._

Aziraphale had busied himself with ordering a wide range of alcohol in quantities that Crowley didn’t even want to _think_ about drinking, which gave Crowley time to gain control over his face.

“I’m sorry, angel,” he said as a rather dazed-looking serving boy walked toward the bar.

“I know you told me not to doubt the Plan, Crowley,” Aziraphale said heavily, resting his chin on his hands, “but I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how this could _happen_.”

Fear shot through Crowley’s body, and he jolted out of his casual slump so hurriedly that he nearly fell out of his chair. Aziraphale had certainly gotten bolder in the centuries since he’d first confessed his questions to Crowley at Kells. He wasn’t saying them in private anymore, wasn’t whispering, wasn’t hiding.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t understand it either, but I’m _allowed_ to not understand. I’m allowed to challenge the fucking Plan, angel, but you’re not. I’m a servant of Hell, challenging the Plan is basically my entire bleeding _job_, but you. You can’t.” Crowley could taste his own desperation on his tongue, and he hoped that Aziraphale could smell it on the air. Anything to make the angel keep his mouth shut.

It didn’t work. If anything, the righteous anger behind Aziraphale’s eyes (and that was what was different, _that_ was what had changed in him. He was angry, and it had hardened him) flared brighter as he said, “Crowley, really. I’m not going to Fall for-”

Crowley’s hands had balled themselves into fists and collided with the heavy wood of the table before Aziraphale could finish that sentence. His own anger was raging inside of his chest, burning through everything in its path. Consuming him, making him into what he was, forcing him to become the thing he tried every day to deny.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_,” Crowley snarled as dark scales pushed their way up through the freckled skin of his hands, “lecture me about Falling, Aziraphale. Don’t you even _think_ about it.”

Vaguely, Crowley was aware that the tavern had fallen silent. He could feel a dozen sets of eyes on him, and he felt them shift away again with a small flick of Aziraphale’s wrist.

Aziraphale’s eyes had gone wide with something that might have been concern but was more likely to be fear. He’d shut his stupid beautiful mouth, though, which had been the point of all of this, so Crowley snapped a collar on the red-hot beast that was clawing its way up his throat.

“Sorry,” Crowley said.

“Nothing to apologize for. You’re right, after all. I don’t know much about Falling because I… well, because I haven’t.”

Crowley couldn’t manage anything more than a stiff nod.

“But I do know one thing, and it’s that I won’t Fall for asking the Almighty why certain things happen.”

“Wh-” Crowley’s mouth dropped open, and he closed it with a click. “How the fuck do you know that?”

Aziraphale’s answer was delayed by the arrival of what looked like the contents of the tavern’s entire cellar. Aziraphale thanked the serving boy, slid him a few coins, and reached for the nearest open bottle.

Crowley couldn’t do anything but stare as Aziraphale tipped the contents of the entire bottle into his mouth.

“Erm,” Crowley said hesitantly, but Aziraphale silenced him with a look.

“I know because I’ve been asking ‘Why?’ for millennia, Crowley, and I haven’t Fallen yet.”

_Bit of a double-fucking-standard,_ Crowley thought, but he was relieved. Something in Heaven had changed, and it meant that Aziraphale was safe. Not Fallen, not Falling. Safe.

So he said, “Right,” and reached for a pint of lager.

The rest of the evening proceeded in a manner that was almost exactly opposite of the typical. Instead of drinking his way under the table, Crowley sobered up for the first time once he got to the point of not being able to say Aziraphale’s name without forgetting a syllable. Aziraphale, however, had none of his usual mild restraint. He drank until he passed out in the middle of a sentence (which was about something that made no sense and had no bearing on anything at all), curly head pressed to the damp and slightly sticky wood in front of him.

Crowley had gotten tispy again after his first bout of miraculous sobriety, so he made a face and forced the alcohol back into the bottles again. For a moment, he considered removing just enough of the liquor from Aziraphale’s bloodstream to bring the angel back to a conscious state, but he decided against it. Aziraphale had come here tonight looking to get blitzed to the point of blacking out, and Crowley couldn’t blame him.

So, Crowley hauled Aziraphale into his arms, taking a couple stumbling steps before righting himself and making his way to the door. He’d carried Aziraphale before, and he could do it again. There was no fire this time, no risk of discorporation, no all-consuming fear. It was just a cold night and a short walk, just Crowley doing what he did best.

It was just Crowley, loving Aziraphale.

When Crowley got home, Anna was sitting up at the kitchen table, reading a book Crowley had given her in the dim light of a dying candle.

“Oi,” Crowley whispered firmly. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be asleep.”

She was grinning at him, eyes bright with silent laughter.

“That’s him?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to him?”

Crowley grunted, motioning with his head for Anna to follow as he made his way into his bedroom. Aziraphale could stay here, sleep it off. Go back to wherever he was supposed to be in the morning.

He tried very hard not to think too much about the sight of Aziraphale lying in his bed. Wouldn’t do any good to dwell on that.

“He just. He’s had a really tough go of it lately, and he just needed to-” Crowley gestured to Aziraphale’s sleep-limp body.

Anna walked over to the bed, looking Aziraphale over with a critical squint. Crowley had been telling her stories about Aziraphale forever - silly things he’d done, the most brilliant things he’d said, Crowley’s favorite memories of him - but he’d never told her the most important things. He’d never given her a physical description, never told her that he’d known and loved Aziraphale before the Fall. He’d spoken about Aziraphale as his best friend, and until now, that had been all Anna had known about him.

“He’s pretty,” Anna said after a moment, smiling at Crowley as she moved back to stand next to him, slotting her delicate fingers between his.

“Yeah,” Crowley said tightly. “He is.”

He could feel Anna watching him before she spoke, scrutinizing him with the same head-tilted stare that she’d given Aziraphale a few moments earlier.

And then she said, “You love him, don’t you?”, and Crowley choked back a sob.

“Yeah,” he said again. “I do.”

Anna pushed herself up onto her toes and kissed Crowley on the cheek, just below the arm of his sunglasses.

“Then I love him, too,” she told him softly, squeezing his fingers once before letting go. “Goodnight, Da.”

“Goodnight, darling.”

The door shut with a soft snap, leaving Crowley alone with Aziraphale. He knew that he should leave, but he gave himself ten seconds. Ten seconds to look, to brush a curl off of Aziraphale’s forehead, to close his eyes and put his hand over Aziraphale’s beating heart. Ten seconds to whisper three words that he hadn’t said out loud since the Fall, to throw them into a darkened room and let them fall on ears that wouldn’t remember them.

When those ten seconds had passed, Crowley slipped out of the room like a shadow. He slept in a chair in Anna’s room, and he dreamed of a pair of smiles that belonged to the two people he loved most in the universe.

In the morning, Crowley opened the door to his bedroom to find the bed made impeccably and a piece of paper on the pillow. The note was folded with a perfect crease and held six words in Aziraphale’s neat script that made Crowley’s heart skip several beats.

_Thank you. And she’s beautiful, Crowley._

*********

The next time that Crowley saw Aziraphale, he didn’t write ahead. He turned up at Aziraphale’s door in the pouring rain, the dark dirt on his hands turned to mud. Aziraphale opened the door after a minute or two of Crowley’s frantic pounding, pulling Crowley out of the storm and ushering him immediately towards the hearth, which was already crackling with warm fire.

“What is it?” Aziraphale was calm, too calm for what had happened, and Crowley clung to him.

“Anna,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s soft body melted with a sigh.

“I’m so sorry, Crowley. Truly. So sorry.”

Crowley had known that this would happen. He’d known it from the moment that he’d decided that Anna was his and no one else’s, but somehow it had never really sunk in that it would mean _this_. He hadn’t been ready for this type of pain.

No one had told him that grief was cold, but it was. Hollow, frigid, sharp-toothed as it gnawed at his bones. Cold and terrible and inescapable, so much worse than anything else.

Crowley had mourned for humans before, of course. Amos and Anah. Their daughters. Eve. Abel. The boys from the bars in Cairo. Yeshua (although that one hadn’t lasted very long). The children from Rome. He was no stranger to mourning humans, but this time was different.

This time it was Anna, and that made all of it so much worse.

She would have died in the plague-riddled streets of London if Crowley hadn’t saved her. She wouldn’t have lived to learn to read, to dazzle strangers with her smile, to meet her husband, if Crowley hadn’t saved her. Crowley knew all of that. He knew that he’d done something good, that he’d stopped a light that the world had desperately needed from going out, but that knowledge didn’t make his chest stop aching.

When Anna had met John, Crowley had started to distance himself from her. He’d explained it all, how he couldn’t let her children know about him, and they’d decided that it was better for him to die. They’d had a mock burial and laid a headstone over an empty grave, and they’d laughed about it after. Anna had never asked him for any other explanation, had never begged him to stay, and he had loved her for that.

Crowley hadn’t gone to Anna’s wedding. He hadn’t been present at the births of her children (although he’d made sure that she and her babies would survive childbirth). He hadn’t been able to care for her when she got sick at the end of her life. It hadn’t been his job anymore, not once John was there, and he’d thought it would make things easier at the end.

It hadn’t.

So Crowley sat in Aziraphale’s sitting room, curled into a ball on the floor by the fire, and he sobbed. His clothes were filthy from where he’d knelt in the dirt by her grave, and his hair was dripping onto Aziraphale’s rug, and his heart crashed against his ribs hard enough to crack them.

Aziraphale placed a blanket over his shoulders, and Crowley held himself tighter. He was here now, here with Aziraphale, and that was better than nothing.

It was _stupid_, of course, and Crowley knew it, but it was warm. So he stayed, and he let Aziraphale wash the dirt off of his hands and out from under his fingernails, and he didn’t speak. Aziraphale talked all the time, a constant stream of comforting words and nothing-meaning words, and it was so much better than being alone.

“Thank you,” Crowley said on the fifth day, and he headed for the door.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice was still so calm, so gentle, and Crowley’s broken heart bled a little more. “I really am sorry.”

“I know,” Crowley said, because he did.

_Some day,_ Crowley thought, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walked away from the warmth that had sheltered him from the cold monster within his own chest, _I’ll tell you about her. I swear, Aziraphale. Some day, when I’m stronger, I’ll tell you._

The fingers of Crowley’s right hand found what they were searching for inside of his pocket. It was a ribbon, soft and well-worn from years of touching. Crowley had bought it for Anna when she was a child because it matched the color of her eyes, and when she’d stopped wearing it, he’d kept it.

It was a piece of her, a piece of his memories, and Crowley vowed to never lose it.

*********

On the anniversary of the day of Anna’s death, Crowley took the ribbon out of his pocket and put it in a box. The box held other things, too, things that he’d collected over the years. Memories of people he’d lost, scars that crisscrossed his heart.

A piece of wine-stained rubble from a city that had burned. A dried head of wheat taken from a field in Mesopotamia that had been drowned in the flood. A broken shackle that had once been locked around the ankle of a child. A piece of cloth from a man who’d been beaten to death for loving another man. And a strip of blue ribbon, nestled in the center, chief among the rest. Brighter than everything else. More beautiful, more loved.

Every time Crowley looked at it, he smiled. He smiled for Anna, because she couldn't anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up - The Spanish Inquisition (or: Crowley Gets Hammered And Aziraphale Helps Him)


	10. Toledo, 1523 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley gets a commendation from Hell about the Spanish Inquisition. He goes to check it out, and he decides to deal with it by quite literally drinking himself into the ground. Aziraphale finds him, and tenderness ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> This note is going to be short because I'm late for a thing, but! I hope y'all are having lovely days, and I appreciate each and every one of you more than I can say. Sometimes it's hard to find motivation to write, but all of your wonderful comments and every kudos makes it that much easier to do this thing I claim to be doing. Also: I know I’m behind on comment replies, but I promise I’ve read all of your kind words and will get to them as soon as I can! 
> 
> I just wanted to clarify a couple things. This is a canon-divergent fic, because I didn't see any way to make Crowley remember being in love with Aziraphale in Heaven and have everything be exactly the same. Consequently (and as you may have noticed in previous chapters), Aziraphale is far more physically affectionate with Crowley than he is in canon. I am planning for the bandstand scene to happen in this story, though - you'll notice that Aziraphale never actually calls Crowley his friend - but there will be a lot of discussion about why it happens after the world doesn't end. 
> 
> Also, by my best estimate, this fic has five-ish chapters left! Thanks for coming along for the ride. xx
> 
> Some significant warnings for this chapter! Language, as always. Intense alcohol usage/drunkenness. Mentions of religious violence (because the Spanish Inquisition), but nothing too graphic. Also, and this one is VERY IMPORTANT: Crowley has a panic attack in this chapter. It's based on the ones that I used to have before I started taking medication, so the description is as real as I could make it. I promise that he's okay, and Aziraphale helps him through it.
> 
> (The end note for this chapter is just to clarify what happens at the end, so it's not relevant here.)

Crowley was sitting in the gutter of a street of a city that he couldn’t remember the name of, howling with laughter. He had no idea how long he’d been there, and he also didn’t care to find out. If he could keep track of time, he was too sober for the circumstances.

He decided that the act of _thinking_ about keeping track of time qualified as too coherent in and of itself, so he lifted the bottle in his right hand to his lips. It was wine, maybe. Had been at one point. Might’ve become something else along the way, but right now, it didn’t matter. If it had alcohol, he was going to drink it.

Someone a few feet away asked if he needed help, and that set him off laughing again. The person said something else to him, something about a church down the street if he needed refuge, and Crowley’s vision went red.

“Fuck off,” Crowley snarled. The person did.

It was an oxymoron, really, the idea of a church helping anyone right now. The churches around here weren’t interested in helping so much as they were killing and destroying and torturing, which only qualified as “help” if one was in Hell.

Crowley had found that in this city, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t.

And oh, remembering what that had been like was _definitely_ grounds for another sip of whatever-the-fuck was sloshing around in the bottle and his stomach. The whole point was not to think about it.

Crowley drained the bottle, smiling to himself when he turned his head and saw dark spots dance in his vision. That was good. It meant that he was almost able to rest again.

The night after he’d taken a tour of one of the Inquisition’s darkened and blood-stained rooms, Crowley had tried to sleep. He’d thought that it would do him some good, help him process things and come to terms with the fact that humanity had done this without any sort of demonic influence. But sleep hadn’t come, and so eventually he’d climbed out of bed and walked to the nearest cantina.  
  
He’d spent however many days it had been since then drinking himself into a stupor. He stumbled through the city with a bottle in his hand, filling and refilling it until he was too drunk to walk. When he fell over, he stayed down, and he continued to drink until he lost consciousness. In the morning, he crawled out of whatever pit or gutter he’d fallen into and started the whole process over again.

It was a sort of routine, and he wasn’t intending on breaking it any time soon. The only variation in his days came from the places he walked, the people who either scoffed at him or tried to help him, and whatever stupid thing that his stupid horrible body decided to do.

Today, that thing was laughing, so Crowley did. He laughed until he choked on the absence of air in his lungs, laughed until his sides hurt, laughed until tears were spilling uncontrollably over his sharp and dirty cheekbones. When the final frayed strands of his consciousness finally broke, he collapsed into a heap of torn black clothes, the shape of a laugh still on his lips.

*********

After Anna’s death, Crowley had spent a few decades traveling in Italy. He’d met a man with extraordinary artistic talent and a lot of good stories (notably, being arrested for sodomy on two separate occasions - the charges were dropped, but Leonardo loved to tell the tale of the trial while sitting in Gian Giacomo’s lap), and Crowley had liked him immediately.

“You look like an Antonio,” Leonardo had told him one night. “I knew an Antonio, once. Heartbreaker, just like you. Devastatingly handsome, but always in love with someone else.”

Crowley had shaken his head and called him ridiculous, but the name had stuck. He was Antonio from that point forward, and when he left Italy at the end of the century, it was with a sketch in his back pocket and a new name for himself on his lips.

The first time someone had asked for his name in England, he’d smiled as he said “Anthony.” It fit snugly and warmly around his heart, and it felt _human_, and he loved it.

Aziraphale had never asked what he’d done in Italy, and Crowley had never told him. Six hours after his return to London, Crowley had met Aziraphale for dinner, and everything had been as it always was. Aziraphale ate, and Crowley watched him. Aziraphale smiled, and Crowley loved him. Aziraphale told Crowley the truth, and Crowley lied. They asked each other for favors - a quick temptation here, a minor healing there - and talked themselves into ordering one or two more bottles of wine than they should have, and it was almost like Crowley had never come crying to Aziraphale about the death of his daughter. It was as though Aziraphale hadn’t spent years healing the wounds of people who died anyway, as if Crowley hadn’t carried him home on the night that he’d drowned his internal organs in liquor.

It had been alarmingly and unsettlingly normal, and it continued that way until the afternoon that a burning scrap of paper had appeared at the foot of Crowley’s bed.

Crowley had identified it on sight. Hell had sent him a few of them over the years (not too many, but enough that he was familiar with them), and they were always the same. _Exceptionally terrible work on [thing Crowley had no hand in doing], Crowley. Take a day off._ Crowley was always happy to take a day off of work for doing nothing, and so commendations from the bosses Downstairs were usually a welcome surprise.

This one hadn’t been, because Crowley didn’t have the faintest idea what it was for.

He’d sent Aziraphale a note to let him know that he was going for a quick trip to Spain to look into something for work. Crowley had said that he’d be back in a day or two, and that Aziraphale should let him know if there was anyone who needed blessing while he was in that neck of the woods. Aziraphale hadn’t replied, so Crowley had popped off to Toledo with the intention of sticking around just long enough to get a feel for what was happening so that he could provide details to Hastur in his next report.

Crowley had gotten all the details he needed within the first hour of watching an Inquisitorial “trial.” If he had been thinking straight, he would have left after that. He would have snapped his fingers and shifted his skinny arse back to London, and he would have called a meeting with Aziraphale to tell him to stay very far away from Spain.

But he hadn’t been thinking at all. He’d watched the Inquisitors condemn person after person after person, an endless parade of death sentences issued by black-hooded men with pale faces and joyless smiles. It was like watching a horror show with especially realistic effects, except for the part where the curtain never dropped and the lights never came up. It wasn’t a show at all. It was _real_. So, Crowley had just stood there and stared, hidden away in the shadows, until he remembered that he could move and transported himself to the street outside.

Crowley had thrown his head back and cursed everything that he could think of. He cursed the Almighty first, and then he cursed Hell for commending him for this. He cursed Aziraphale for being naive enough to still believe that humans were inherently good, and he cursed himself for cursing Aziraphale. But mostly, he cursed the humans for what they’d done, for destroying everything good with cruelty and murder and torture and _sin_, and he cursed the ones who sat by and let it happen. And then he’d gone back to his little rented flat to sleep, and when that had failed, he’d embarked on the binge-drinking expedition that outpaced all others and resulted in him lying comatose in a pool of alcohol and his own saliva.

There were hands on him now, though. Big and gentle, shaking his shoulders. Crowley mumbled something against the cold stone under his cheek, and he turned away from whoever was trying to get him up. This had happened once before - a kind stranger had stopped in the street, tried to bring him somewhere safe and warm - so Crowley knew that if he just resisted for long enough, whoever it was would leave him alone.

This time, they didn’t. Crowley realized that they were trying to talk to him, too, which made it worse. He didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. His head was pounding, and he needed a drink, and he needed to be left alone.

“Shuddup,” Crowley grumbled. He reached around his body to brush the hands off of his back, and when he touched them, he froze.

He knew these hands.

Panic seared through his brain, bright and violent, and Crowley scrambled backwards and forced his eyes open, anxious to confirm that he hadn’t felt what he’d felt, that he wasn’t hearing what he was hearing.

But Aziraphale was there, crouched on the edge of the road with his forehead pinched into a dozen concerned wrinkles, and he was saying something. His beautiful hands were still outstretched, still reaching for Crowley, and Crowley’s ruined heart twisted against his lungs.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly, and Crowley knew that he’d been saying it for a while already. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

That was just unfair. It should have been illegal, saying something like that. Implying that Crowley could share a place with Aziraphale and call it home, because he couldn’t. He could never, and he _would_ never. He’d never dare jeopardize Aziraphale’s safety like that.

The thought of it, though, was electrifying. So Crowley made a sort of whimpering sound and croaked out, “Home?”

Aziraphale’s tender smile nearly blinded him. And then Aziraphale’s warm hands were pulling Crowley close and tucking him against his softness, pressing sharp edges to round curves, and the world shifted.

They landed in the sitting room of Aziraphale’s house, and the fire in the hearth crackled to life immediately. Crowley’s head was spinning from the spatial jump, and he felt his stomach turning, so he made a break for the sink. Aziraphale was right behind him, resting a hand on his back and brushing dirt-and-wine-caked red hair out of Crowley’s eyes, tucking strands of it behind Crowley’s ears.

When Crowley was done, he slid to the floor. The world was still twirling around like a drunk dancer, so he closed his eyes and hugged his knees close to his chest.

As soon as his eyes slid shut, he could smell the incense again. He heard the tear-stained pleas of condemned men. A pale-faced Inquisitor grinned at him out of the darkness. It was _awful_, and he needed something to drink, and he needed to tell Aziraphale to stay away-

Aziraphale. Aziraphale had been there. He must’ve seen- he had to see it, right? He couldn’t not have. How was he still standing?

“Angel,” Crowley said shakily, cracking an eye open. “Angel, are you okay?”

A tight laugh rang out from the other side of the table, and Aziraphale’s heavy footfalls came closer. One of his hands came into view, offering a cup of something to Crowley, so Crowley took it.

Water. Right. Hadn’t had any of that in Someone knows how long.

“Am _I_ okay?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said into his water. “Are you- do you need anything?”

“You’re ridiculous.” Aziraphale sounded tired, mostly, but there was a little twinge of anger in his tone as well. “I am not concerned about myself at all at the moment. I’ve got more pressing issues to deal with.”

It felt like Crowley had been punched in the gut. He’d made Aziraphale worry about him. Aziraphale wasn’t supposed to worry about him; _he_ was supposed to worry about _Aziraphale_. That was the way things went. Aziraphale needed saving, and Crowley saved him. It was never supposed to be the other way around.

Distantly, Crowley recognized the sound of Aziraphale’s voice again, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. Something was sitting on his chest, crushing the air out of his lungs, and he couldn’t fucking breathe. Crowley reached for the front of his filthy tunic, grabbing at it, trying to tear it off, get it to stop strangling him. He couldn’t breathe, and he needed to breathe, but he _couldn’t_ and oh fuck he was going to die here wasn’t he? He was going to discorporate on Aziraphale’s kitchen floor, and then Aziraphale would have to bury his body, and he’d have to come back with a new body and spent the rest of eternity making up for the fact that he’d left Aziraphale to deal with his corpse, and he really was just a burden on Aziraphale, wasn’t he, and he should just leave before he fucked anything else up.

Crowley could feel his head repeatedly colliding with something solid, and he could tell that he wasn’t sitting still, but he didn’t know what he was doing. Was someone pushing him? Had Aziraphale moved them again?

“Crowley,” Aziraphale practically yelled, and it cut through the noise in Crowley’s head. “Please, Crowley. Whatever I said, I’m _sorry_. Please, please look at me.”

When Crowley opened his eyes (when had he closed them again? Why had he done that?), Aziraphale was kneeling in front of him. Aziraphale’s beautiful cheeks were flushed in splotches, and his eyes were wide and clear, checking over every inch of Crowley’s face.

The thing that Crowley kept hitting his head against was Aziraphale’s hand, which was pressed up against the table leg that Crowley had been leaning against. The reason that Crowley kept colliding with it was because he was rocking back and forth, but as soon as Crowley realized that he was doing it, he stopped.

Aziraphale didn’t move his hand. He kept it where it was, knuckles against the wood, ready to catch Crowley’s head if he started moving again.

Crowley realized that his chest was wet, too. His cheeks were dry, so the wetness thankfully couldn’t have been tears, which meant- yep, he’d spilled his cup of water all over himself.

“Angel, what- what’s going on?” Crowley clutched at the floor beneath his fingers, needing to hold onto something stable, needing to get himself back under control.

“You’re panicking,” Aziraphale said, sounding like he was having a bit of trouble breathing himself. “I’m not sure what I said, but please believe that I didn’t mean to harm you. I’m so sorry, Crowley.”

_You made him feel bad, you complete fucking idiot,_ Crowley thought to himself. _Look what you’ve fucking done._

The feeling of instability that was clawing its way through Crowley’s bones intensified, and so he wriggled out from under Aziraphale’s arm and flung himself down on his back, pressing every part of his body against the floor.

He could feel his own heartbeat as it thumped against the ground. It was racing, going far too fast, but he couldn’t seem to get enough control over his body to make it stop. He should have been able to fix it, should have been strong enough to overcome the limitations of this damn human corporation, but he wasn’t. He was weak, shaky, and confused, and his brain refused to let him access the parts that controlled his body.

A few feet away, Aziraphale shifted. He crawled over to where Crowley was, and then he laid down next to him and took his hand.

Their fingers weren’t interlocked, but this was a true hand-hold. Aziraphale’s broad palm and thick fingers were pressed over Crowley’s slender ones, and the angel was squeezing lightly, and it was somehow both not enough and too much for Crowley to handle.

“W-what are you doing?”

Aziraphale flinched and tried to move his hand away, but Crowley snatched it back.

“I didn’t say _stop_,” Crowley whispered, knowing that he sounded like a frightened child.

Aziraphale’s answering laugh was low, rumbling through his chest.

And then he said, “I’m just… being here,” and Crowley had to remember that kissing Aziraphale wasn’t a thing that he could do (or that he could even _want_ to do, not if he wanted to keep Aziraphale safe).

So Crowley said, “Oh,” and he watched a slow smile slide over Aziraphale’s lips.

They lay there in silence until Crowley finally felt like he was able to sit up. Aziraphale led him to a chair and brought him another cup of water, and this time, Crowley managed to drink all of it without spilling.

“Right,” Aziraphale said firmly, taking the empty cup from Crowley and placing it on the table. “You’re filthy, and you smell like human bodily fluids and alcohol. If you wanted, you could use a little curse to make yourself clean, but in my opinion, you need a wash.”

Oh. Aziraphale wanted Crowley to go, then. Right. That made sense - he’d been here for far too long, anyway, and he’d made Aziraphale take care of him like some sort of nursemaid, and that must have been exhausting.

Crowley nodded and climbed to his feet.

“Yeah, ‘course. I should- yeah, erm, right. Thanks for- thanks for finding me, I guess I’ll see you nex-”

“Where do you imagine that you’re going?” Aziraphale interrupted, practically running to block the path between Crowley and the door.

Crowley blinked at him. “Uh. Home?”

“If you think I’m about to let you leave in this state, Crowley, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“B-but you said I need-”

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley’s laughably lovesick heart flung itself into his throat at the sound of the endearment, “I’m not entirely incompetent. I do actually own a bathtub.”

Oh no.

“Nguh. Right.”

Aziraphale motioned for Crowley to follow him, so Crowley did. The bathtub was a bit larger than most (and Crowley wasn’t entirely sure that it _actually_ fit in the little side room where Aziraphale had put it, but he was willing to restrain himself from teasing Aziraphale about silly little miracles because he was about to benefit from this particular one), and with a wave of Aziraphale’s hand, it was full of hot water.

Crowley looked over at Aziraphale expectantly, waiting for him to make some sort of too-kind farewell and leave Crowley to it. Aziraphale stared back, eyebrow quirked in question.

“It won’t do you much good to bathe in your clothes,” Aziraphale said after a moment, and Crowley choked on his tongue.

“I- you- _what_?”

Aziraphale flushed pink from his hairline to the bottom of his neck.

“If you don’t want me to stay - your hair’s _tragically_ dirty, Crowley, really - that’s fine, but I just thought that… I don’t know, I suppose I thought that you might like help.”

Crowley should have said that he could do it on his own, thank you very much. He should have miracled a curtain over the doorway after Aziraphale left, and he should have taken care of the aftermath of his Inquisition-inspired breakdown by himself.

Instead, he asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know how much you saw in Spain,” Aziraphale started hesitantly, and Crowley’s gut folded itself into accordion shapes, “but it must have been a lot, because I know that it hurt you. And I- well, I thought that if I were in your place, I’d like for someone to take care of me.”

“You really don’t have to do that, angel,” Crowley said hurriedly, shoving his hands into his dirt-caked pockets in an attempt to hide their shaking.

“You took care of me once, not too long ago, when I needed somewhere to lay my head.”

_Yeah, of course,_ Crowley thought. _Because I’m in love with you, even if you don’t know it. But you’re not in love with me, and besides, this is different than that was. I’m **worse**, worse than you in every possible way, and this stupid shit I’ve done is making that all too clear._

“It’s not the same,” Crowley protested. “You just- you needed somewhere to sleep. I’m a _mess_, Aziraphale, and I don’t. I don’t want you to have to, um.”

“Care for you?”

Stiffly, Crowley nodded.

Aziraphale seemed to process this for a moment, and then he asked, “Can you do me a favor?”

_Anything_. “Mm?”

“Can you let me care for you? Please?” Aziraphale’s blue eyes were ice-bright but impossibly warm, and Crowley felt his resolve fading. “I know that I don’t have to. But I’d like to, if you’ll let me.”

“Why?” Crowley asked again, desperate to know why Aziraphale was so insistent upon this.

“Because you’d do it for me.”

Crowley shivered, and then he pulled his shirt over his head and stepped out of his fashionably-tight trousers. He didn’t look at Aziraphale again until he was in the water, and even doing that much was an effort.

Aziraphale had busied himself with cuffing his sleeves at the elbows and retrieving a washing cloth and a bar of soap that smelled far too good to have its origins on this little island.

“Soap looks nice,” Crowley said, looking down to where the bathwater was already turning grey. Given that he was sitting naked in Aziraphale’s bathtub, idle conversation about soap was the best he could manage to come up with.

“It’s French,” Aziraphale said with a fussy little sniff that made the corners of Crowley’s mouth twitch upward into something that could have very charitably been called a smile. “It was a gift from an aristocrat a few decades back.”

Crowley did smile a bit at that. “Yeah, ‘course it was.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You, uh. You like posh fancy stuff.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Aziraphale muttered primly, wetting the cloth with water and rubbing the soap into it until it made a lather. It smelled like lavender. “Here. You wash everywhere that you can reach, and I’ll get started on your hair.”

Crowley started to rub the dirt off of his torso (it had apparently gotten through his shirt - might’ve had something to do with lying in muddy ditches, come to think of it) and made a valiant effort not to think about the fact that Aziraphale’s hands were going to be in his hair in a very short amount of time. Aziraphale’s concern was making sure that Crowley was clean, and that was it. Crowley was the one who’d dreamed of putting his hands in Aziraphale’s curls for the better part of five thousand five hundred years, not the other way around.

With a little bend of the air, a pitcher full of perfectly hot water appeared in Aziraphale’s hands.

“Close your eyes, please,” Aziraphale said gently, and Crowley did.

The water ran over Crowley’s head and down his nose in warm streams. It felt _lovely_, and Crowley let go of a breath that he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

Aziraphale’s fingers, beautiful and perfect and strong, tangled in Crowley’s hair, and the rest of the tension flooded out of Crowley’s body. He slid down, resting his head against the rim of the tub and forgetting completely about washing the rest of the dirt off of his arms and legs.

Behind him, Aziraphale laughed.

“Wha’?” Crowley mumbled.

“Sometimes, Crowley, I could swear you’re a human. You act just like one.”

Jealousy that had no business being there flared up in Crowley’s chest.

“Ah,” Crowley bit out. “Bathed a lotta humans before, then?”

“Some, yes.”

“How’d that come about?” He needed to shut up, and he knew it, but the question slipped out anyway.

Aziraphale’s hands stopped moving, and a heavy sigh sent cool air rushing over the crown of Crowley’s head.

“I was a plague doctor,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley felt like slamming his head into the side of the tub. He should have thought of that earlier. Aziraphale had been clinical about this whole ordeal from the start - kind, yes, but clinical - and there was good reason for it. It was routine, something he must have done a dozen or fifty or a hundred times. “It wasn’t in the job description, exactly, but sometimes it made them feel better.”

“I- fuck, angel, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Crowley knew that it wasn’t, but he let it go. He’d kick himself for his thoughtlessness later, sometime when he was alone.

The rest of the bath passed in silence. Crowley was only allowed to get out of the tub after Aziraphale had checked him over (and clipped his broken fingernails) and determined that their work was done.

“I’ll leave you to dress, then. Tea in the kitchen when you’re done.”

“Right.”

Crowley dressed quickly in the same type of outfit he’d had on before and made his way out to the kitchen, padding barefoot across the cool floor. He stopped when he reached the doorway that opened to the kitchen, breath catching in his throat at the sight of Aziraphale.

The angel was sitting at the table with his back to Crowley, looking out the window. Dim grey afternoon light had filled the kitchen and was making itself busy turning Aziraphale’s white curls into strands of silver, and Crowley was transfixed.

Aziraphale was beautiful, and Crowley loved him. He loved him so much that it ached. He hadn’t thought that he could love this Aziraphale more than the one he’d lost in the Fall, hadn’t dared to dream that his love could get any more all-consuming, but here he was. Crowley was standing still in a world that moved too fast, anchored to the constant unmoving fact of his love for Aziraphale. He’d been standing still for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like to fall, but now he was doing exactly that. He was falling even deeper in love with Aziraphale, falling so hard and so fast that he couldn’t stop if he wanted to.

When he’d been StarMaker, Crowley had loved Aziraphale with all of himself. He’d made stars for Aziraphale, had kissed Aziraphale whenever he’d wanted to, had figured out how to love and be in love at the same time that Aziraphale did. They’d done it together, and it had been the purest and most beautiful kind of love. And when he’d been StarMaker, Crowley had known that he would do anything for Aziraphale, and he’d known that Aziraphale would do anything for him.

This love was different. It was the same at its core, of course; it had never faded, and it had never stopped being a part of Crowley’s life. But it was also something entirely new, because now Crowley knew what it was like to lose the love of your near-immortal life. He knew what it was like to know that you’d never be loved back and keep on loving anyway. He knew what it felt like to make Aziraphale smile, to make him laugh. He knew Aziraphale’s favorite books and worst memories, and he knew that Aziraphale liked fancy foods and good wines and warm fireplaces.

Most importantly, though, Crowley knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Aziraphale cared about him. Aziraphale couldn’t ever love him (it went against the nature of an angel to love a demon, and Crowley knew that) but he was still giving Crowley all that he could. Without Crowley asking, without anyone telling him to do it, Aziraphale had given Crowley water, held his hand, bathed him, and made him tea. Aziraphale, despite all evidence that he shouldn’t, genuinely gave a fuck about what happened to Crowley.

So, this love was different because Crowley knew Aziraphale in a way he never had before the Fall, and so he could love Aziraphale in a way he never had before. A little voice in Crowley’s head reminded him that this would make things so much worse, that it would be so much harder to keep his feelings under wraps, but Crowley didn’t care. He could do it. He was strong enough, now, to keep loving Aziraphale for as long as he had the chance to, because Aziraphale cared about him.

Crowley stood in the doorway for another moment. Toledo had been the closest that Earth had ever come to being Hell, and he knew that he wouldn’t ever forget it. He’d have nightmares about that place and its horrors until the never-end of his life, but Aziraphale had come for him. Aziraphale had saved him.

“I bet you put too much sugar in it,” Crowley said at last, stepping into the kitchen and making his way over to the table.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

_I love you,_ Crowley thought idly, and he took a sip of his tea.

It _was_ too sweet, but he drank it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley does explain what happened in Spain to Aziraphale, but I didn't write it here. I'll reference that it happened in a later chapter, but I didn't want y'all to think I'd forgotten to have him do that. He does it, but it just doesn't happen right away.


	11. The Somme, 1916 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale haven't spoken since 1862, and now a war is raging in Europe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> Bit shorter one this time, sorry! And I know there's a few-century time jump, but it is what it is. I couldn't figure out a way to write those centuries well, so here we are.
> 
> Also, the roles that A & C play in the war in this chapter are based on [this post](https://lonicera-caprifolium.tumblr.com/post/190251218478). The post is about WWII, but I thought it would work for WWI as well. 
> 
> I'm really very tired, so I'll be going to bed now, but I wanted to say that I cherish each and every comment that you all give me (on this fic and any others)! It makes it easier to write when I know that people care about reading this, so thank you very much. 
> 
> I hope that you all have a lovely day!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: mentions of war, death, bullet wounds, and blood. Because, y'know, WWI.

The sound of gunfire was bracketed by the short booms of exploding shells and the sharp whistles of ones that flew over Crowley’s head. There was shouting, too - orders, commands, cries for help - but that tended to get lost in the screaming. “Fire!” and “Move, Goddamnit!” and “Medic!” were drops of rain splashing on the surface of a cold-watered ocean, and Crowley was having a hard time keeping track of all of it.

“Sir!” someone said behind him, and then there were small bony hands on his biceps.

Crowley knew who it was before he’d even turned around. He knew all of his boys by name and face and voice, because he didn’t want this war to cost them their humanity. He wanted them to fight as people, and when they died, he wanted them to do it as people. Knowing them, knowing what they looked like and what they sounded like and what they called themselves, was the way that Crowley made sure that they stayed men. He kept them from becoming numbers, from becoming soulless monsters who took lives without thinking, from becoming the worst kind of nothing that war-torn humans had a tendency to turn into.

“What is it, Thomas?” Thomas was barely eighteen, and he stood at the height of Crowley’s shoulder. He was frightened by violence, and he pulled the trigger on his rifle like he was afraid that it was going to bite his fingers off.

“It’s James, sir. He’s been hit.”

That made seven. Seven men from his unit wounded in the hour since the shooting had started.

“Right,” Crowley said stiffly. “Called for a medic?”

“They’re busy.” Thomas’s eyes were wide, tear tracks cutting lines through the mud on his cheeks, and Crowley resisted the urge to reach for him. Officers weren’t supposed to be soft, and Crowley had to maintain some kind of cover while he was here. He had to play the part until he could get his men out of harm's way.

Hell had told him to come to the front and make some trouble in the British ranks, and so that was what he was doing. Making the army lose men, one small unit at a time. They’d be replaced, of course, but it was a hassle for the people in charge. Mostly, though, it let Crowley save the lives of boys who were too young or too frail or too scared to be of any use to the army. It let him save the people that no one else was looking out for.

“Wait for one.” Crowley waved Thomas off and turned back toward the edge of the trench. Men from other units fell to the ground, and their replacements raced forward. Head down, rifle up, firing until they were hit. It was no wonder that the medics were swamped.

Crowley hoped that Aziraphale wasn’t in France. He hoped that the angel was off somewhere else, healing people who were much less badly injured than the men here. He didn’t want to think about Aziraphale trying to run through this hailstorm of bullets and shells, didn’t want to think about other men’s blood in those white curls. And he refused to think about a beautiful corporation without its angelic soul, lying in a pool of mud that might have been made from dirt and water and might have been made from dirt and blood.

No, he wasn’t going to think about it. There was a good chance that Aziraphale wasn’t here.

Aziraphale hadn’t spoken to him since 1862, but Crowley knew that he was playing a part in the war. There were stories in the trenches about a medic with magic hands, a man who could make a fellow’s lifeless heart start beating or make rotting flesh functional again. That medic had a nickname, and the first time Crowley had heard it, he’d laughed. Guardian angels were quite a few ranks lower than principalities.

If they’d have been on speaking terms, Crowley would have found out where Aziraphale was stationed and sent him a letter. He drafted that letter a hundred times a day in his head; there were jokes about being demoted, of course, but there were also questions about Aziraphale’s wellbeing. Was he okay, seeing what humans could do to each other? It had destroyed Crowley in Spain, the sudden and utter understanding that humans sometimes decide not to give a shit about avoiding cruelty, and Crowley was afraid that Aziraphale was suffering from that knowledge now. But Crowley never put pen to paper, because he knew that Aziraphale didn’t want to hear from him. Not after he’d gone and fucked up like he had.

The centuries since Toledo had been a strange hodgepodge of light moments and dark ones. Crowley had been on the receiving end of a few thousand smiles from Aziraphale, and those had been the highlights. There had been countless kinds, and he’d catalogued every one and committed the whole register to memory. Toothy smiles that were flashed quick and bright at one of Crowley’s stories, closed-lipped ones that folded around forks and spoons (and, on one occasion, fingers), wide ones that sat at the end of a startled laugh, tiny ones that Aziraphale only gave when he was trying to be stern with Crowley but failing at it.

And then there had been the parts that were tar-dipped, and Crowley remembered those in painful detail, too. Aziraphale’s reminders that they stood on different sides of a set of cosmic balancing scales, the occasional sharp-tongued jabs in the shape of the word “demon,” the carefully never-used word “friend.” Crowley knew that Aziraphale cared for him, but he also knew that Aziraphale had boundaries. He’d pushed them a few times, voiced a few doubts and done a few things that would be considered unbecoming of an angel (like, for instance, washing the hair of a demon and indulging in human food and literature), but he’d never even come close to renouncing Heaven. This meant that sometimes, when he was scared or defensive or nervous because one of the archangels had dropped in for a visit, Aziraphale clung to his boundaries like they were the only thing keeping him afloat, and he pushed Crowley away.

Crowley had needed the holy water for insurance. Hell wasn’t all that smart, but there was always a chance that they’d catch on some day. Crowley had thought - naively, stupidly - that maybe Aziraphale trusted him enough to give him that bit of insurance.

But it had been _“out of the question,”_ and Aziraphale had gotten scared before Crowley could even say anything in his defense. It had been _“fraternizing,”_ a word wrapped in chains, and then it had been Aziraphale’s retreating back and the burn of unwarranted anger in the back of Crowley’s throat.

Crowley didn’t want that interaction to be their last one, but he had no idea how to fix things. He’d broken the thing he’d spent thousands of years building, and he didn’t know what type of gesture would be big enough to come off as an apology. A rain-soaked letter from a battle in the Somme wouldn’t be enough, so he didn’t even try. He could let Aziraphale play Guardian Angel to the suffering and dying, and he could busy himself with saving lives and chalking it up as temptation on his reports to Hell, and he could wait for the right chance to say sorry.

*********

Crowley led his men through the woods, keeping them hidden from view with a few well-placed demonic miracles. He would get them to the nearest town, give them all new clothes and new names, and send them off to different places from there. Some of them, at least, would survive the war. Many would try to go back to England, would take the risk of execution in order to see their families again. A few of the smarter ones would settle somewhere on the continent. Get a nice boring job, fall in love, start a family. Stay out of trouble and live out the rest of their short lives with only a little bit of post-traumatic stress.

“Sir?” It was a whisper, but Crowley recognized Thomas’s voice. He’d told all of the boys to keep their mouths shut and their heads down, but Thomas was a curious one. He liked asking questions, and Crowley didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop. Aziraphale would have liked Thomas - they’d have traded questions until the sun burned out if they had ever had the chance to meet.

“Yeah?”

“How much longer?”

“Not much.” Seven or eight more miles, a few more hours, and they’d be safe. The boys would go off, scared-looking but relieved, and Crowley would turn on his heel and walk back to the trenches to do it all over again. He was a courier of sorts, the bearer of lives that the British government treated as expendable. A reverse Charon, bringing souls out of damnation and into life.

“Sir?”

“Shut _up_, Thomas,” hissed one of the others. His name was William, and he was the first man that Crowley had chosen to bring simply because he was planning to become a deserter anyway. All of the boys Crowley saved were willing to leave, of course, but William had already decided to. Crowley had seen that in him when he was choosing his next unit of men, and so he’d picked him. Better for William to get away safely than risk being shot on the edge of a trench. William was a bit older than the rest - early twenties instead of late teens - and he’d seen much more of the war than anyone else. He was waspish and war-ravaged, and Crowley felt for him. It was easy to get that way when you’d seen what he and William had seen, when you’d heard what they’d heard.

“What is it?” Crowley whispered.

“Can we go home, sir? When we get out?”

William answered before Crowley could, sharp-tongued and short-tempered. “Not if you want to live, you idiot. Go home ‘n they’ll kill you.”

Crowley had his back to Thomas, but he knew that those blue eyes had gone very wide with panic.

“What are we s’posed to do, then?”

“Hide,” William snapped. “Run, and run some more, and then hide. Wait it out.”

“Sir?” Thomas asked, pleading. He was looking for a different answer, something he liked better than that, but Crowley couldn’t give him one.

“William’s right, Tom. If you want to be safe, you’ll take what I’m gonna give you, and you’ll stay in the shadows until you don’t have to anymore.”

“When will that be?”

Crowley sighed. When would the war be over? When would the army stop looking for those who’d fled from the battlefields? When would anyone actually be safe again?

“I don’t know,” Crowley said honestly.

It usually took quite a bit of convincing (and begging, and sometimes bribery) to get Thomas to shut his mouth, but not this time. Crowley’s uncertainty had been enough to stun him into silence.

Crowley heard the shot half an instant before he felt the sting of the bullet. The slug tore through the fabric of his coat and bit into the skin of his side, and Crowley yelped. He was halfway to pressing his hand over the wound when Thomas started screaming, and he forgot everything else.

The bullet had lodged itself in the right side of Thomas’s chest, and blood was blooming around the hole like a terrible rose. Thomas was still yelling, but William had clapped a big hand over the bottom half of Thomas’s skinny face to muffle the sounds.

Crowley’s first thought was that this shouldn’t have happened. No one should have been able to see them. He’d made doubly sure that he’d done his curses correctly, and so no human should have been able to shoot and hit-

No _human_.

Slowly, Crowley looked over his shoulder, ignoring the burning of his torn skin and the wet heat of the blood that was leaking down his side and sliding down his leg, and he saw her.

She always looked pretty much the same. Hair so red it could never have been mistaken for a natural color, sadistic smile on her crimson-painted lips, fire-bright cruel laughter in her dark eyes. Her weaponry and clothes changed with the times, though, which is why her unspecified-army-uniform-clad arms were wrapped around the rifle that sat on the back of her neck and shoulders.

“The demon Crowley,” War said, the laugh slipping down from her eyes and landing on her lips. “I was hoping that was you. Couldn’t quite see from over there.”

Behind Crowley, William was giving Charles and Henry very pointed instructions on where to apply pressure to Thomas’s chest, and he was muttering under his breath about stray bullets and bad luck.

So they couldn’t see her, then. They thought this was an accident.

_Fucking shit_, Crowley thought, and he clicked his fingers together with a grimace.

He’d only done this a few times before (and had only figured out that he _could_ do it while he was messing around with his powers in bed one night during the sixteenth century), but he knew that he would be exhausted when he was done. Time, by its very nature, is constantly sprinting in a race that no one else wants to be running, and it doesn’t much like being held back.

War raised an eyebrow. “Neat trick.”

“Fuck you,” Crowley said feelingly. “What d’you want?”

“Death’s pissed off at you,” War said, walking circles around Crowley. She stopped in front of William, tilted her head, and kicked him in the face with her boot. Dark blood started running thick and hot down William’s frozen face, and Crowley glared at War. He moved over and pressed his hand to William’s nose, transferring just enough energy to mend the broken bones and clean up the blood that was trickling off of his chin and landing on Thomas’s stomach.

“Stop fucking around,” Crowley snapped. “What’s Death’s problem with me?”

“You keep stealing his souls.” War sat down on a tree stump, resting her rifle between her knees.

Crowley shrugged. “So?”

“_So_,” War said with a laugh, “he wants you to stop.”

“I’m just doing my job.” It was a lie, of course, but Crowley had gotten very good at those. He'd had nearly six thousand years of practice. 

“That’d be fine, except you’re stopping him from doing his. And me from doing mine, come to think of it.”

“I don’t answer to you,” Crowley said firmly.

War laughed again, a chuckle that sounded very terribly like it was made up of human screams.

“You live in the world, Crowley. You answer to it, which means that you answer to us.”

“I really don’t.”

In the time it took for Crowley to blink, War was on her feet and had the barrel of her rifle pressed to the spot between Crowley’s eyebrows.

“If you’d like to test that theory, Crowley, just say the word.”

Crowley licked his lips with a two-pointed tongue, but he stood his ground. There wasn’t much point in letting War get to him. He would be fine. He was just as immortal as she was, maybe more, so death wasn’t really something that should have scared him.

The fact that it _did_ wasn’t something that Crowley wanted to spend too much time thinking about, so he gritted his teeth and spat, “You can’t kill me.”

“No, but I can send your stupid shitty soul back to Hell. I hear they make you do a fuckload of paperwork to get a new body.” War’s eyes flicked over Crowley’s shoulder, and her smile widened in a way that made Crowley’s blood turn to ice. “And if you’re gone, time starts back up again, and your poor little deserters won’t have you around to protect them anymore.”

“No,” Crowley breathed. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“I really, _really_ would.” War pressed the barrel into the skin of Crowley’s forehead so hard that he was certain there would be a bruise there. “But Death said that you can have these ones, so long as you fuck off and don’t do it again.”

Fuck.

“Fine,” Crowley said. He was getting a bit dizzy from blood loss, so he needed this conversation to be over sooner rather than later. “Fine. I’ll take these, and then I’ll stay out of your way.”  
War stepped back and slung her rifle over her shoulder with a cold smile.

“I’m glad we understand each other.”

“Fuck you,” Crowley said again, because he wanted to. It didn’t do anything but make War laugh again, though, so some part of Crowley regretted saying it.

“Oh, and just so we’re clear,” War said softly. “If I hear that you’re doing this again, I’ll be back. And next time, I can promise you that I won’t miss.”

She pressed a red-painted fingernail to the spot on his face where she’d been shoving her gun. And then the air shifted, and Crowley was left staring at a patch of air that smelled faintly of gunpowder.

Time restarted with a jolt, and Crowley nearly fell over with the force of releasing it. He forced a bit of energy towards the cut in his side, starting to heal it slowly enough that none of his men would notice.

“Right,” Crowley said, pushing at William’s shoulder. “Move over. I’ve got this.”

*********

If someone had gone back years later and asked any of the surviving members of that deserter-unit how their wounded commander had managed to carry a grown man a few miles without stopping, none of them would have had an answer. If someone had asked where their new civilian clothes had come from, they wouldn’t have been able to answer that, either. And if someone had asked for their commander’s surname, they would have realized that he’d never given one. He had introduced himself as Anthony, and that had been the end of it. There hadn’t been a need for anything more.

But if someone had traveled to America at the end of the war and sought out a man by the name of Thomas Fell, they would have found someone who remembered something very strange about the day he'd been shot.

He had been born as Thomas Hawkins, but he’d lived most of his life as Thomas Fell. He’d been told that Fell was the name of his commander’s family friend, and that it was a sort of good-luck charm. Something to protect him, something special.

And so when Thomas Hawkins became Thomas Fell, he vowed to become something special to live up to his name. Thomas Hawkins was a deserter who had never been found, but Thomas Fell was a war veteran who became a husband and a father. Thomas Hawkins had been afraid of the dark, but Thomas Fell loved to look at the stars. Thomas Hawkins had been fond of asking questions, but Thomas Fell liked telling stories.

Thomas was known for one story in particular because it was an impossible mess of monsters and angels and magic. It was the one story that no one ever believed, despite the fact that its teller swore up and down that it was true.

“It was a fever dream,” some said.

“You were dying - maybe you saw Heaven,” a faithful few had suggested over the years.

Most people, though, dismissed it as an outright lie. A tall tale, maybe, to be told around bonfires and at dinner parties, but never anything close to the truth. If angels existed, they certainly wouldn’t look the way Thomas described them. They would have wings of white feathers, not grey-black ones. They would be gentle and patient, not brash and foul-mouthed. And a healing from an angel wouldn’t burn, it would soothe.

But Thomas kept telling the story of the angel who had saved him during the war. He kept telling it until the day he died, by which time his children knew it so well that they passed it along to their own. His story became something of a legend, a mythical never-could-happen bedtime story about strange angels at the Somme.

*********

A quarter of a century after muddy trenches and mustard gas and desertions stopped by War herself, another war was raging. This one was darker, crueler, and worse, but for Crowley, it was better. It was better because Aziraphale was here with him this time, standing in the ruins of a church instead of in some medical tent in some shell-and-bullet shredded field in France.

Aziraphale was staring at Crowley like he was expecting to see two heads instead of one, looking between Crowley’s face and bookbag-filled hand with a sort of frenetic disbelief.

That was good, Crowley decided. A good kind of shock. The kind someone gets when they’re expecting a cracker and get a cake, or when they’re anticipating an embrace and wind up getting kissed.

“Lift home?” Crowley asked with a satisfied smirk, already climbing down towards the street and a sleek black car. That was the sort of gesture that qualified as an apology.

It was a shame that he hadn’t been looking at Aziraphale just then, because if he had been, he would have seen something in those blue eyes that he’d long ago given up ever seeing again. But it was also a good thing that he hadn’t been looking, because what was there would have terrified him.

It was love, and not the purely angelic kind. It was the kind of love that humans had been writing stories about since the invention of written language, the kind of love that topples kingdoms and builds new ones. And it wasn’t new, really, because it had been a part of Aziraphale for much longer than even Aziraphale himself knew. He didn’t remember when it started, but he knew that he was feeling it now, and it was so strong that it made his chest hurt.

Hours after the car had carried Crowley away from the bookshop, Aziraphale stood in front of his mirror. He fiddled with his bowtie, smoothed his hands over his waistcoat, and straightened the lines of his overcoat.

“I’m in love with Crowley,” Aziraphale said to himself.

Something inside of Aziraphale shifted. He loved a lot of things about the world - food, books, wine, scotch, poetry, human kindness - but there was one thing that he loved more than anything else. That thing was a demon who had shockingly red hair and strange yellow eyes and skin that had more freckles than the sky had stars. He had a sharp laugh and a satin voice, and he wrapped his skinny body in fashionable clothes, and he was (in spite of all that he’d been through and in defiance of what should have been his nature) _good_.

And Aziraphale thought that Crowley was beautiful, and he loved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aight, y'all, we're about to get into some *stuff.* Be prepared for the final chapters to be pretty heavily canon-divergent!


	12. London, 1967 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley is told that he goes too fast. He decides to handle this by drinking himself into oblivion, but a stranger in a bar has other ideas. 
> 
> Or: the one where Crowley is friends with Freddie Mercury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good morning/afternoon/evening/middle of the night to all of you! I hope that everyone is doing well (and if you're not, please feel free to let me know! I'd love to help you if I can). 
> 
> Sorry that it took a while for me to get this one done; I had a sudden inspiration to write [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578289) soft little fic for a friend this week, and so I had to put this good ol' angst fest on hold for a moment. But I'm back now! This chapter is, uh, actually sort of not as sad as some of the others have been? It still has sad moments, but I think it ends on a good note. 
> 
> As always, I appreciate each of you more than I can possibly say. Any kudos/comments here or notes on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hopeinthedark1901) truly make my day. <3
> 
> Some context about who Freddie Mercury was and some of the details of his life that are referenced in this chapter can be found in the end note! Also, I do quote the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, which I (obviously) do not own and had no hand in creating. 
> 
> Warnings for language, discussion of HIV/AIDS, and Freddie's death.
> 
> (PS. I know I'm behind on comment replies - I'm working on catching up! Thank you for your support.)

Crowley had felt the air shift as soon as he’d opened the driver’s side door. He’d known that Aziraphale would be there, sitting in his car and looking over at him, but his stupid heart had done strange wiggly movements anyway.

_ “What are you doing here?” _

_ “I wanted a word with you.” _

It had all gone downhill from there, really. Now, Crowley was sitting alone in shocked silence, holding a horribly tartan-patterned thermos full of something that could kill him, and Aziraphale’s voice was ringing in his ears. 

_ “You go too fast for me, Crowley.” _

What the fuck was _ that _supposed to mean?

The entire conversation was on a playback loop in Crowley’s head. It wasn’t entirely fair to say that things had started to go to Hell in a proverbial handbasket right from the get-go, actually, because when Aziraphale had handed over the thermos, Crowley’s mind had gone blank. Aziraphale had been protecting him, saving him from doing something dumb and dangerous, and that had been wonderful. For that moment, Crowley had looked at Aziraphale and seen the familiar. Aziraphale had seemingly gone back to before Crowley had ever fucked up, had apparently accepted Crowley’s book-centered apology during the second World War and started to trust Crowley again. Aziraphale had given Crowley the holy water and believed that Crowley would call off the robbery, and he’d done it all to keep Crowley safe. 

Crowley had hoped for that. He’d hoped that Aziraphale would go back to normal, and he’d wanted things to go back to the way they had been, and for half a second, it had seemed like they might. 

But then he’d offered Aziraphale a ride (twice), and Aziraphale had said no (twice). The Aziraphale from before 1862 would have told Crowley the address of a new restaurant he’d been meaning to try, or he’d have invited Crowley into his shop, but he wouldn’t have said what this Aziraphale had done.

_ “No, thank you.” _Bitingly polite, sharp-edged and stiff-collared. Not friendly. Not normal. Somehow, some way, Crowley had fucked things up again. He’d been given back a good thing, and he’d chucked it into the bin before it had been in his hands for longer than a minute. 

He’d apparently broadcasted those feelings on his face, because something had prompted Aziraphale to go and say the worst bits. 

_ “Oh, don’t look so disappointed. Maybe one day we could, I don’t know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.” _

And Crowley had grown fractically, illogically, idiotically hopeful at that. He’d latched onto those things, to those maybe-colored promises of future outings that involved no one but himself and Aziraphale, and so he’d lost control of his tongue and offered again. 

_ “I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go.” _

In nearly six thousand years of life on Earth and an unnumbered amount of years before the creation of Time, Crowley had never seen Aziraphale’s face look like that. It was like he was thinking about saying a dozen different things all at once, and his pretty face had shifted in a thousand little directions before he’d decided what to say. 

_ “You go too fast for me.” _

Crowley desperately wanted to know what the other options had been. Had Aziraphale even thought about saying yes? Had he wanted to go somewhere with Crowley? Had he even _ meant _the things he’d said about a picnic and the Ritz, or was he just trying to come up with something that would appease Crowley enough to give himself a convenient exit?

What the ever-blessed Heaven had prompted him to say that Crowley was going too fast? How had he even figured that? 

Crowley set the thermos in the passenger seat, ignoring the way the leather of the back was still faintly warm from where Aziraphale had been sitting against it. 

“I’ll fucking- I’ll fucking show him ‘too fast,’” Crowley mumbled as he turned his key in the ignition. The Bentley rumbled to life in a way that sounded a little bit like she was rolling her eyes at him, but he ignored her and stepped on the accelerator with a foot made of lead. 

As Crowley sped through London, he realized that he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t very well show up at the bookshop in the morning and say, “Hey, angel, what the Hell were you on about last night?” because Aziraphale had made it very clear that he didn’t want anything to do with Crowley at the moment. And power-hungry Germans with superiority complexes don’t exactly decide to bomb the fuck out of London every day, so his previous fix was a no-go. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said to himself. “Fuck, fuck, _ fuck _.” 

This might not be a fixable thing. He might’ve really done it this time, might have done just enough to get Aziraphale to want him gone, and that was so far beyond terrifying that Crowley didn’t have words to describe it. 

Who even was he anymore without Aziraphale? Who had he ever been? 

A gnawingly familiar tightness was rising in Crowley’s chest, winding its coils and chains around his lungs and starting to squeeze. He was panicking, all sweaty palms and short breaths and shaky instability, and he hated it. 

With a growl, Crowley jerked the wheel sharply to the left, using a small miracle to make sure that he didn’t hit the cars in front or behind him as the Bentley slid into an empty parking spot along the kerb. He flung the door open and stepped out, pushing his glasses up his nose and running a sweat-slick hand through his hair before heading for the nearest bar. 

_ Big problems, _ Crowley thought with a cruel twist of his lips, _ require big solutions. Short of that, enough alcohol to forget you have them. _

*********

Crowley had put back three shots of vodka and was nearly done with his first pint of lager when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Fuck d’you want?” Crowley snarled into his beer, not even bothering to look up. He’d rather tempt every married man in the city to cheat on their wives than let some human derail his drinking binge when he’d only just got started. 

“Forgive me for saying, but you look like you could use some company, darling.” 

Crowley raised an eyebrow and turned his head. Dark hair, brown skin, wide smile with too-large front teeth. Not bad-looking, though, and if Crowley had ever had eyes for anyone who wasn’t Aziraphale, this bloke would’ve probably made the list. 

But Crowley was in love with Aziraphale, and humans had the habit of usually wanting things that Crowley had always found to be more than a little bit repulsive, so he shook his head. 

“Sorry,” Crowley said firmly. “Not interested in, erm, _ that _.” 

The guy laughed. “Not like that. Not that you’re not very attractive, of course, because you are, but. I don’t make those kinds of proposals to blokes who drop four drinks in fifteen minutes.” 

Crowley’s other eyebrow joined the first one on his forehead. 

“Sensible of you,” he said. “But shouldn’t you be a bit, mm, discreet? Public place ‘n all that.” 

“Nor criminal anymore, mate. New law, you didn’t hear?” 

Crowley _ had _heard. He’d celebrated, even, with a few nice folks at a dance club in Soho. Good for them, that change in governmental policy. It’d been about time. 

“Heard, yeah. ‘S a difference between ‘not criminal’ and ‘accepted’ though, uh…” Crowley trailed off, gesturing towards the bloke for his name. 

“Freddie.” 

“Freddie, right. You’re a bit bold, aren’t you?” 

There was another big-toothed smile. “More than a bit, darling. Mind if I sit?” 

Crowley grunted noncommittally into his empty pint glass and waved at the bartender for a refill. Freddie slid into the stool next to him and did the same. 

“So,” Freddie said, leaning against the sticky bartop. “What happened to you?” 

“Why d’you want to know?” 

“Might help to talk about it?”

“Prob’bly won’t,” Crowley mumbled, accepting the fresh pint of beer that Freddie pushed down the bar toward him and taking a long sip. “Nothing you can do about it, anyway.” 

Freddie grinned at him. “Romantic troubles, then?” 

“Wh- how did you-” 

“It’s all over your face.” Freddie winked at Crowley and took a drink from his own lager. “Who is it? What’ve they done?” 

“You _ really _want me to get into this?” 

“I’ve got nothing on for the evening. Love a good love story, too.” 

“It’s not a ‘love story.’ He-” Crowley swallowed, shifting his eyes away from Freddie and into the foam-covered dark amber liquid in his glass. “He doesn’t love me back.” 

“Oh,” Freddie said softly. “I’m sorry. Not interested in men, or…?” 

“No, no, it’s not that. He’s just- he and I, we just don’t work. Can’t ever work. Wouldn’t be safe for him to love me, not given… given his family and situations with that.” 

“What’s your relationship to him, then?”

“We’re friends.” For his life, Crowley couldn’t come up with one reason that sufficiently explained why he was telling a complete stranger in a dingy bar about Aziraphale, but here he was, doing exactly that.“Or, ngh, we _ were _friends. I fucked it up, twice, and I don’t think he’s going to forgive me this time. But I need him to forgive me. I need him to be my friend again.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I don’t know how to exist without him, okay? He’s my best friend. And I thought- when we were younger, something happened, and we lost touch for a while. I’d loved him before that, but I thought I’d never see him again, y’know? I didn’t stop loving him, I just… I just thought I’d never get to do it again, not really. But then we found each other again some years later, and, well. He’s the most important thing in my life - in the _ world _\- and I keep letting myself lose him.” 

Freddie made a considering sort of noise. “Doesn’t it hurt, though? You love him, and he calls you his friend.” 

“He doesn’t.” Crowley choked on a hollow laugh. “His family are… not really in support of my existence. So he just- just doesn’t call me his friend. We do things together, and he cares about me, but.” 

“Wouldn’t it be easier on you if you just let him go?” Freddie’s voice was soft, gentle, and Crowley had the sneaking suspicion that one of Freddie’s hands was going to end up on top of one of his own over the course of this conversation. 

“I think it would kill me,” Crowley said honestly. “I’ve loved him for my entire life, Freddie. I don’t know how to stop.” 

Freddie spun his half-empty glass on the counter, watching his fingers. “I’ve never loved anyone like that.” 

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t.” Freddie’s head snapped around again at that, but Crowley didn’t give him a chance to respond. “You’re right, you know? It’s hard. It’s so hard, loving him and knowing that he’ll never love me back - I wouldn’t even want him to, really, because his family takes care of him, and he’s better off with them than he would be with me. I live- I have a difficult life, and I don’t want him to have to live it, too. So I just, just take what I can. He cares for me, he goes to dinner with me, he calls when he needs help or someone to talk to, and that’s. That’s enough.” 

“Is it?” 

“When someone’s the love of your life, yeah. You just know that you’ll be there with them, at their side, for as long as you can be. Knowing that you still love them, even if they don’t know what they mean to you.” 

A tiny smile slid over Freddie’s lips. “Do you mind if I write that down?” 

“Eh?” 

“I write songs, sometimes. Do you mind if I write down what you just said?” 

Crowley shrugged. “Sure, go for it.” 

Freddie pulled a small notebook and a pencil nub out of his back pocket. He fell silent for a few minutes, scribbling and scratching out different arrangements of the same words until he found a version he liked. 

“Thank you,” he said at last, tucking his notebook back into his pocket. “For telling me, and for letting me use your words.” 

“Not a problem.” Crowley finished his beer and considered ordering another, but he stopped himself. Should probably sober up, actually; he wasn’t even very tipsy, but he did want to drive himself home. Preferably make it back to his flat in one piece. No fatalities before he could figure out what to do about Aziraphale.

“I’m sorry, by the way.” Freddie’s voice cut through Crowley’s thoughts, and his dark eyes were wide and soft. “I hope things change for you.” 

Crowley waved a hand dismissively, a little laugh slipping through tight lips. 

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be alright.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Crowley made an attempt at a smile, and Freddie smiled back. “So. You’re a songwriter?” 

“Singer, too.” 

“Oh? Got a band?” 

“Not yet, but I will. I’ve got an exceptional vocal range, and I write good songs.” 

“Even though you steal lyrics from other people?” Crowley teased. 

Freddie giggled, high and sweet. “Even though, yes.” 

“How are you planning to go about getting a band together?” 

“I hang around the local music scene. Scouting out some local talent - I’ll find the right ones eventually.” 

Crowley decided that yes, Freddie would find the right people. He’d find them within a few years, and if Freddie was as good as his overinflated ego implied, they’d have good luck. People would know about Freddie. 

All of this was accomplished with a subtle twist of Crowley’s wrist below the bar, of course. It wouldn’t do to have Freddie see anything odd. 

“Well,” Crowley said with another half-smile. “Best of luck to you. I should be going.” 

“Best of luck to you too, uh…” 

“Anthony.” 

“Best of luck to you, Anthony.” 

Crowley left the bar just as sober as he’d been when he came in, and with exactly the same amount of ideas on how to fix things with Aziraphale. It should have sent him into a panic again, but somehow, it didn’t. 

Freddie had been… well, he’d been _ someone, _and he’d been there exactly when Crowley had needed him to be. It had been centuries since Crowley had last talked to anyone about Aziraphale (Anna was the last one who’d really known any of the details, but Leonardo had known enough to know that Crowley wasn’t available), and it felt something close to good to be able to do it again. It didn’t solve his problems, and it didn’t really make things better, but it left a feeling in his chest that wasn’t entirely terrible. 

*********

“Anthony, darling!” Freddie was shouting above the noise, pulling his fiance by the hand toward where Crowley was leaning against the wall. “So glad you could make it! This is my beautiful love, Mary.” 

“Hi,” Crowley said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. “Fred’s told me a lot about you.” 

“He’s been strangely mysterious about _ you _,” Mary laughed. “It’s a relief to know that you actually exist - part of me thought Freddie must have been making you up!” 

Freddie gaped at her. “Darling, of course he’s real! He’s just a man of mystery - you know how those types are, always bouncing in and out of the shadows, showing up just when you need them to.” 

“Yeah, ‘s me,” Crowley said with a grin. “Man of mystery, yeah.” 

“How’s your man?” Freddie asked, leaning in closer so that he could be heard without having to yell. “Friends again, yet?” 

Crowley winced. He hadn’t spoken to Aziraphale since the night of the holy water and going too fast. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to reach out, of course; he did, but every time he made a move to actually _ do _it, he reminded himself that he didn’t know what he’d done to make Aziraphale upset with him, which meant that he didn’t know how to fix it. So each time he picked up the phone and punched in Aziraphale’s number, he hung up before the first ring. Every time he thought about driving by the bookshop, he made an illegal u-turn in the middle of the street before he even got within sight of it. He told himself that he’d only contact Aziraphale first if it was an emergency of some kind, and so far, he was holding himself to that. 

“No,” Crowley said, forcing his face into a smile. “It’s okay, though.” 

“One of these days when I ask, Anthony, that answer is going to be ‘yes.’ I can feel it - you’ve got big things coming!” 

“Thanks, Fred.” 

“It was nice to meet you!” Mary shouted to Crowley, tugging at Freddie’s hand. “Freddie, babe, you’ve got to go up with the band - they’re waiting for you!” 

Crowley waved goodbye and slouched back against the wall. He was content to be in the background, nursing a few drinks while Queen talked about their first ever album and staying somewhat sober while everyone else got raging drunk. Most people were here for Queen, ready to celebrate the launch of whatever weird style of music Freddie and his bandmates had managed to shove onto a disc of vinyl, but Crowley was here for Freddie. He liked the music, of course, but that wasn’t the important thing. The only reason that he was here was because Freddie had asked him to be - Crowley had tracked Freddie down at another bar in 1968, and they’d stayed in contact ever since - and it felt nice to have a friend again. It was good to have someone invite you to things, someone who thought about you, someone who asked your opinion on things. 

It wasn’t that Freddie was a replacement for Aziraphale, because no one ever could be. No, it was the principle of the thing. Freddie had been a stranger who had been kind, and that type of kindness was a rare thing in the life of a demon. In a way, Crowley almost felt that he owed Freddie the same type of support that Freddie had shown him, and so he was here. He’d be at these things as often as Freddie wanted him to be, and he’d be the kind of friend that Freddie deserved. 

It also helped that Freddie was almost nothing like Aziraphale. Aziraphale was fair-skinned and fluffy-white-haired, and Freddie had beautifully brown skin and short dark hair. Aziraphale dressed a few decades out of date, while Freddie was so fashion-forward that he sometimes started wearing styles months before they became popular. Aziraphale was relatively soft-spoken, and Freddie was loud. Aziraphale was a confusing mess of emotions, and Freddie was an open book.

Aziraphale didn’t want to see Crowley, and Freddie did. 

So Crowley clapped along with the music and shot Freddie a few smiles. He rejected advances made by three men and two women, and he made his way through a few glasses of scotch. He even danced (with very little coordination, but quite a bit of enthusiasm) with Freddie and Mary at the end of the night, and he let himself laugh. 

It was really rather nice, being wanted. Even if the person who wanted him was human, even if this was all going to end someday, even if it couldn’t last forever. It was still nice, and so Crowley put his fears and past memories on hold, and he let himself live. 

*********

In April of 1987, Crowley’s phone rang in the middle of the night. 

Crowley groaned and rolled over, fumbling around on his nightstand before he finally found the receiver. 

“Yeah?” 

_ “Hello, darling.” _Freddie sounded tired, high, or both, and Crowley sat up in concern. 

“Hey, Fred. You okay?” 

_ “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” _

Crowley checked his watch. 

“It’s three in the morning, mate.”

_ “Is it?” _

“Yeah.” Crowley took a deep breath. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong - it had to be, for Freddie to be calling this late after months of almost no communication - and Crowley’s gut turned upside down in fear. “Where’s Jim? Is he okay?” 

_ “Jim’s just fine. He’s sleeping.” _

“Fred,” Crowley said firmly, urgency rising in his voice, “what’s going on?” 

Silence stretched across the seconds like pulled taffy, sticky as it clung to the air.

_ “I’ve got it,” _Freddie said at last, and Crowley felt like he was going to be sick. 

“Got what?” Crowley knew exactly what, but he needed to hear Freddie say it. He needed the confirmation, the complete and absolute certainty that came along with those four capitalized letters. 

_ “AIDS.” _

“Oh.” There it was, then. “I’m- I’m so sorry, Freddie.” 

_ “Don’t you dare go feeling bad for me, Anthony Crowley. I’m still here - I’m still alive, and I’m still happy. I’ve got everything I need.” _

Crowley was itching to go to him. He wanted to climb out of bed, jump into the Bentley, and drive to Kensington. He wanted to take off his sunglasses, look Freddie in the eyes, and explain everything. He wanted to beg Freddie to accept his help, to accept some form of miraculous pain relief at the very least. He wanted to spare Freddie from going through what was going to happen. He wanted to keep Freddie safe. 

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t just show up at Freddie’s house and say, “By the way, I’m a demon. I’m really bad at actually _ being _a demon, of course - please don’t think I’ve been tempting you for the past twenty years or something, because I haven’t been - but I’ve got all of these crazy magical powers, and I can help make you better or at least take away some of your suffering.” Freddie wouldn’t believe him, for one thing. He’d laugh it off, call Crowley crazy, and tell him to sober up. He’d compliment Crowley on whatever crazy contact lenses he was using to make his eyes look like that, and there wouldn’t be anything that Crowley would be able to do to convince him otherwise without turning into a snake and scaring the shit out of his only friend. 

Helping Freddie in a supernatural way wouldn’t work, but helping him in the human way might, so Crowley said, “Can I do anything for you?” 

_ “Don’t tell anyone. I’m keeping it close to the vest for now - I don’t want to worry the fans, and I refuse to be their AIDS poster boy.” _

“Right.” 

_ “I’m not their cautionary tale. I’m still me, and if people know about this, I won’t be. They won’t look at me the same. They’ll look at me like I’m dying, and I don’t want to be looked at like I’m dying.” _

Crowley refrained from pointing out that Freddie _ was _dying. Instead, he swallowed and said, “You’re still you, Fred.” 

There was a soft laugh from the other end of the phone, tired-sounding but still fiercely alive. _ “I am.” _

“You’re Freddie Mercury.” 

_ “I’m Freddie fucking Mercury,” _ Freddie said with another laugh. _ “Yes.” _

The line went quiet again, crackling on occasion with faint static that let Crowley know that Freddie was still sitting on the other end, still breathing, still listening to Crowley breathe. 

“Thanks for calling,” Crowley said softly after a few minutes had gone by. “Thanks for- for telling me.” 

_ “No pity, remember,” _ Freddie reminded him, and Crowley could hear his smile. _ “It sounds like you’re about to go soft on me, old boy, and I won’t have it.” _

Crowley laughed, then, and he was surprised to find that it was a real one. There was still some strange sort of happiness here, some kind of joy that came along with talking to a friend who refused to be seen as anything less than what he was. 

“Right, got it. No pity.” 

_ “No pity.” _

“Goodnight, Fred. Go to sleep, yeah?” 

_ “Goodnight, darling. I will.” _

The line clicked and went dead, and Crowley set the phone back in its cradle. The darkness of his room felt heavier now, seemed to be blacker than it had been before. It wasn’t that Crowley was surprised to know that Freddie was dying; he’d lived far too long and known far too many humans to be caught off guard by that anymore. From the moment humans were born, they started dying, and Crowley knew that better than anyone. 

No, the part of this that hurt so badly was that Freddie was dying from _ this. _AIDS was a cruel beast of a disease, a sneaky sharp-toothed monster that took control of the parts of the human body that were created for self-protection. It was insidious and sometimes slow, and it was painful. AIDS was a killer with a thousand weapons, and no one ever knew exactly how it would kill them if they got it. It was laden with uncertainty, and none of the humans had yet figured out a way to stop it. It was a juggernaut of pain, and Crowley hated it. He hated that it existed at all, and he hated that it helped reinforce certain people’s prejudiced hatred against the queer community. And Crowley hated that Freddie had gotten it, hated that he would have to watch his friend fight a battle that was lost from the start.

But Crowley set his jaw and decided that he would watch that battle if Freddie asked him to. He would be there for his friend in every single human way that he could, and he would stand with Jim and Mary and everyone else and fight for Freddie’s memory long after Freddie was gone. He would run to every corner of the Earth to make sure that Freddie wouldn’t be forgotten. 

_ Maybe I go too fast, _ Crowley thought bitterly, _ but I’ll use that to run this fucking race until my legs give out. _

*********

When Crowley walked into the bedroom, Freddie was coughing. This wasn’t new, exactly, but it had never sounded like this. Crowley didn’t even have to see Freddie to know that the end was coming soon, sooner than anyone in this room wanted it to. 

“Hey, mate,” Crowley said, brushing his fingers softly over his friend’s forehead. “How’re you doing?” 

“Fine, darling. Just fine.” On the other side of the bed, Jim flinched, hand tightening on Freddie’s arm. He knew it, too, then. 

“Good.” Crowley pulled a chair over to the side of Freddie’s bed and took his hand. 

“How…” Freddie broke off in a fit of coughing, his too-thin body shaking with the force of it. “How are you?” 

“Same as I always am. Doin’ alright, yeah?” 

It was a bad joke, but Freddie laughed anyway, a tiny rasping thing. “You couldn’t even have mercy on me and quote _ my _lyrics, could you? You bastard.” 

“Sorry,” Crowley said with a grin.

Freddie had been asking Crowley the same question nearly every time they had seen each other over the past twenty-four years, and today was no exception. 

“How’s this man you love? Have you made up with him yet?” 

It was remarkable, really, that Freddie had been able to hold out hope for this long. Crowley’s answer had never changed, not once in all the times that Freddie had asked the question, but Freddie kept on asking. He knew that Crowley would never want anyone else, and so he was persistent. He wanted Crowley to be happy. 

Crowley was halfway to his usual chest-ripping “No” when he realized that this time was different. The words of this question hadn’t changed, but the significance of the answer mattered a great deal. Every time that Crowley confessed that he hadn’t gone to see Aziraphale, that he hadn’t even made so much as a half-hearted attempt at fixing what he’d broken, Freddie’s face fell a little more. This was probably the last time that Crowley would hear this question, and it was probably the last time he’d have the chance to answer, and so he did what he had to do, and he lied. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said with a smile that felt more forced than he would have preferred. “Went by to see him last week. Apologized, asked him to forgive me. Asked if- asked if he’d be my friend again.” 

Freddie’s illness-thinned face broke into a wide smile, and Crowley’s heart ached at the sight of it. Some part of Freddie had to know that Crowley was lying; if he hadn’t done anything in twenty-odd years, what would have changed now? But Freddie wanted to believe that Crowley was telling the truth, so he did. 

“Good.” Freddie was still smiling, and he gave Crowley’s hand a squeeze. “You shouldn’t be alone.” 

Behind his sunglasses, Crowley was blinking back tears. _ No pity, _Freddie had said. 

“I’m not alone, Fred. Got you, don’t I?” 

Freddie nodded, squeezed Crowley’s hand again. “And him. You’ve got him, too, for when I’m gone.” 

Crowley made himself smile again, a little teasing curl of his lips. 

“Who’s saying anything about you going anywhere? You’re - what was it? Oh yeah. You’re Freddie _ fucking _Mercury.” 

“I am,” Freddie said, but he sounded tired. “I always will be.” 

Three days later, Freddie was dead.

*********

“Shit.” 

Crowley couldn’t believe that he was actually _ here _, standing in front of this door, working up the courage to knock. Aziraphale probably didn’t want to see him. This was incredibly stupid, really, but what choice did he have? He needed someone. 

_ “You shouldn’t be alone.” _Freddie’s voice was echoing in his head, and Crowley scowled at the air. 

“Shit,” he said again, and then he knocked four times on the door.

Crowley mostly wasn’t expecting that Aziraphale would answer. The handwritten sign in the window said that the shop was closed at this hour, which meant that Aziraphale was most likely in his back room with his pretty nose buried in a book he’d read a dozen times before. So, Crowley jumped a little when the door flew open to reveal a flustered and irritated-looking Aziraphale.

“I’m sorry, we’re very definitely cl- _ oh. _Crowley, hello.” 

“Hi.” 

Aziraphale looked Crowley up and down, taking in the black tuxedo. With a jolt, Crowley realized that Aziraphale was wearing one as well, and he took a few steps backward. Aziraphale was clearly going out somewhere - he wouldn’t want to go with Crowley to a blessed _ funeral _of all things. 

“Where are you going?” Aziraphale asked softly. 

“Funeral. ‘S- it’s actually why I’m here.” Aziraphale’s brow crinkled at that. “I have to go to a funeral - Freddie Mercury’s, I assume that you’ve at least heard of him - and I. I didn’t want to go alone.” 

“Oh?” 

“I didn’t have anyone else to ask,” Crowley said, hating the desperation that had crept into his voice. “Would you- would you come? With me?” 

Aziraphale stepped out of the shop, locking the door behind him with a snap of his fingers. 

“Of course.” 

Crowley blinked at him. “Really?” 

“In all truth, I was already going. Freddie was important to people, and he deserves all of the respect in the world.” Aziraphale looked up at Crowley, soft-eyed and entirely too kind. “And I know that you knew him. You were in the paper with him, once, just standing in the back of a photograph. Smiling at him.” 

“Nghn,” Crowley said. “Right, yeah. Was a while ago, but.” 

“It was, but it doesn’t matter. You knew him, and you… and you need someone. I am more than glad to be that someone.” 

When Crowley had imagined what Aziraphale would say to him after a quarter of a century of tension-filled silence, this hadn’t been it. He’d thought that Aziraphale would tell him to bugger off, maybe, or that there would be a careful distance set between them. He’d dreaded the possibility that Aziraphale might make another remark about the pace at which Crowley moved through life. He’d had nightmares in which he never saw or spoke to Aziraphale again. But the one thing that he hadn’t dared consider was that Aziraphale might act _ happy _to see him, that Aziraphale would go with him willingly and without so much as a half-hearted protest. 

It didn’t really make sense, but Crowley wasn’t about to question it. If Aziraphale was doing this, there was a chance that things could be okay again. There was a tiny golden light, a glimmer of hope that looked like nights spent drinking wine in the bookshop and midday outings for chips or crepes. If Crowley could have that back, if he could have _ Aziraphale _back, then he would spend the rest of his immortal life trying to figure out what he’d done to earn it. 

In 1967, Aziraphale had thrown the words _ “too fast” _at Crowley, and they’d lodged themselves in his chest like knives. They hadn’t moved, not one inch, in all of the years since. But now, as Aziraphale reached out and linked his elbow through Crowley’s, they fell to the pavement with a clatter. 

A sound that Crowley had certainly not planned on making slipped past his lips, and he looked down at where Aziraphale’s hand was resting against his arm. Aziraphale flinched and made a move to pull away, but Crowley didn’t let him. He crushed Aziraphale’s arm against his side, holding him there. He felt heat rising in his cheeks, spreading down his neck and down his torso, but he didn’t care. Aziraphale was touching him, comforting him, and that was so much more than enough.

_ I love you, _ Crowley thought. _ I don’t understand you, but I love you. _

Out loud, he gave as nonchalant a grunt as he could manage and said, “C’mon, angel. Gonna be late.” 

“Not with your driving, we won’t be,” Aziraphale muttered around a sigh, and Crowley’s lips twisted into a smile. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley asked as they walked toward the Bentley, “are you wearing a _ tailcoat _?” 

“Tailcoats are _ stylish, _Crowley.” 

By all rights, it shouldn’t have been like this. There should have been some tension, some darkness, some heaviness lingering around here somewhere. Something should have felt… wrong, maybe. Off. But it didn’t, because Aziraphale was being fussy and out-of-fashion and ridiculous, and because Crowley loved him so much that it ached in the same way it had done for six thousand years, and because Aziraphale was trying and failing to hide his smile. 

When they arrived at West London Crematorium, Aziraphale took Crowley’s arm again. Crowley’s entire body flooded once more with warmth, and he memorized the pressure of Aziraphale’s arm on his. This was worth remembering. 

They stayed that way, locked together at the elbow, for the entire service. Aziraphale never once tried to pull away, and Crowley hardly dared to breathe too deeply for fear that he would do something to cause it all to end. 

But it didn’t end, not for a long while. It didn’t end until after Jim had smiled at Crowley when the service was over, until after Crowley had said his condolences to Freddie’s family, until Aziraphale had introduced himself (as Aziraphale Fell, much to Crowley’s amusement) to all of the people who came over to say hello. It didn’t end until they were back at the Bentley, where Aziraphale only dropped Crowley’s arm so they could both get into the car. 

As soon as Crowley shut the door, Aziraphale reached over and took his hand, lacing their fingers together. 

Crowley stared. 

“I truly am sorry,” Aziraphale said quietly. “I know that you must have loved him very much.” 

“He was a friend. A- a good friend.” 

“I know.” 

Aziraphale left his hand there as Crowley drove back to the bookshop, his heavy fingers pressed between Crowley’s thin ones. It was nothing more than an act of support for a grieving friend, of course, but Crowley memorized it anyway. He hadn’t held Aziraphale’s hand like this since before the Fall, and he refused to let any moment of it go unnoticed. 

So Aziraphale held Crowley’s hand as Crowley drove too fast, and Crowley did what he’d always done. Crowley loved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Quick context for things on this chapter! 
> 
> Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of the rock/pop band, Queen. He met the other members of the band by following the local music scene and finding a band called Smile, and then joining (and later renaming) that band when its lead singer quit. He was at one point engaged to his best friend, Mary Austin, but they never got married. According to Austin, this was because she believed that Freddie was gay (although during that discussion, Freddie himself said that he thought he might be bisexual). They remained close friends for the remainder of Freddie's life. 
> 
> Freddie had many relationships with men and women over the years, but for the final six years of his life, he was living with his partner, Jim Hutton. In April of 1987, Freddie was diagnosed with AIDS. He died in 1991 from AIDS-related pneumonia. 
> 
> I have chosen to make this chapter about Crowley's friendship with Freddie for two reasons: one, I think they would have been friends; and two, I am a massive fan of Queen, and when I learned Freddie's story, I was captivated. It was really fun to write him for this fic - I hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	13. London, 2008 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Antichrist arrives on Earth, and chaos ensues for eleven years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! 
> 
> Last week, I asked my followers on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hope-inthedark) if they would prefer me to write a Very Long chapter or two shorter ones, and they voted for the first option. So, here is a giant 9k+ chapter - I know it's been a minute since I last updated this story, but that's the reason why!
> 
> We're getting very close to the end here, folks, and the final piece of this chapter is the beginning of the long-awaited and long-promised happy ending. I hope that you enjoy it! As always, I *adore* every comment I get, and I also pay attention to who leaves kudos, so if you're out there reading this, I notice you! I see you, and I appreciate you, and you have all of my love. 
> 
> Chapter-specific warnings: language (a lot of it), alcohol consumption, and some mushiness (finally)

Seventeen years. He’d had seventeen years of casual dinners, seventeen years of trips to the opera and the symphony and Shakespeare plays, seventeen years of nightcaps-turned-full-bottles in the back of Aziraphale’s bookshop. Crowley had just been settling into it, too. He’d just been getting used to things going back to normal, and he’d finally stopped jumping when he answered the phone to find a normal-sounding Aziraphale on the other end of it. 

He hadn’t thought that this would come so soon, but it had, and now the Bentley and its owner had both carried one more Antichrist than they’d ever planned on doing. The basket was gone now, handed safe and sound to a Satanic nun who’d made some sort of idiotic commentary on the Antichrist’s feet, but the backseat of the Bentley still smelled faintly like sulphur. 

Hell tended to cling to things, Crowley had found. There was always a little bit of it left in any place it had touched, no matter how hard you tried to get rid of it (for instance, a mostly man-shaped being who had the eyes of a snake). 

Still. Some form of air freshener was definitely going to be necessary. Sulphur wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell, and the Bentley was evidently not a fan. She was taking longer to accelerate than usual, and Crowley swore that he could hear her sighing at him every time he hit the brakes. 

Crowley and Aziraphale had been friends again for seventeen years, and now Crowley knew that they only had eleven more. Eleven years and a few days, and the Earth would be a scorched ball of rock playing battlefield to the Host and the Horde. 

That wasn’t enough. 

Twenty-eight years of normal wasn’t enough. Eleven more years of Aziraphale wasn’t enough. Crowley didn’t know how much  _ would  _ be enough (some cruel part of his brain suggested  _ forever _ , but he crushed that thought under his heel), but a little more than a decade was certainly not it.

Maybe some things could go ever-so-slightly wrong with the Antichrist’s upbringing. Maybe the Antichrist wouldn’t turn out quite as evil as Hell had hoped, and they’d have to try again. That would give Crowley some more time to be with Aziraphale and memorize everything before he lost Aziraphale again. Crowley was beginning to realize that losing Aziraphale again was inevitable  _ — _ some day, the Earth would end, and Aziraphale would go back up to Heaven as Crowley went back down to Hell. But eleven years was too short a time, too soon an expiration date, so Crowley resolved himself to do something about it. 

*********

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted, bursting through the front door of the bookshop. “Oi, angel, are you here?” 

There was a soft sound, and the white-fluffed top of Aziraphale’s head appeared around the end of a bookshelf. 

“We need to talk,” Crowley said, trying to keep the panicked tightness of his throat from leaking its way into his voice. “I’ve just come from _ — _ ” 

“Delivering the Antichrist, yes.” Aziraphale slid a blue-leather bound book into a gap on the shelf. “I know.” 

Crowley stared at him. 

“You what?” 

“Had a visit from Gabriel earlier,” Aziraphale said calmly. “He told me that things - Armageddon things, to be precise  _ — _ have started to happen, and that you were involved. It wasn’t too terribly difficult to connect the dots.” 

“It wasn’t?” 

“Really, Crowley.” Aziraphale hadn’t looked at Crowley’s face even once since Crowley had come in, and it was beginning to get a bit irritating. “We have  _ known  _ that this was coming. It’s no grand surprise.” 

“You knew?” Anger caught like hot ash in the back of Crowley’s throat. “You fucking  _ knew,  _ and you didn’t tell me?” 

“I didn’t know  _ when _ ,” Aziraphale snapped, and when he turned, his blue eyes were steel-cold and sharp. “Of course I didn’t know that it was going to be now! I would’ve _ — _ I would’ve told you.” 

“Right.” 

“But we both knew that this was going to happen someday. We may have pretended otherwise _ — _ ” Crowley flinched at that, because that was exactly what they both had been doing for as long as they’d been on this soon-to-be-damned mudball “ _ — _ but we knew it was coming. It was always going to end.” 

“Right,” Crowley said again, running a hand through his hair. He wanted to stop the apocalypse so that he could have more time with Aziraphale, but there was no point in doing that if Aziraphale was ready to leave. If Aziraphale wanted to go home, Crowley would step back. He would follow all of Hell’s orders to the letter, and the Antichrist would destroy the Earth, and Heaven and Hell would have their war. And Crowley would betray Satan in the end, because he would make sure that Aziraphale survived the war. He would fight at Aziraphale’s side, protecting him, keeping him safe, because letting the world end would all be for nothing if Aziraphale died in the final battle. “Right, yeah. You want _ —  _ yeah, of course you want to go home, why wouldn’t you? Sorry. Sorry I bothered you, I didn’t mean t _ — _ ” 

“I didn’t say I  _ want  _ this to happen,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley’s mind went blank. 

“What?” 

“I said that we knew it was going to happen, not that I’m in favor of it doing so.” Aziraphale’s eyes were clear blue but darker than normal, tainted by something Crowley couldn’t name. “But there’s nothing to be done, is there? The Antichrist is here. It’s begun.” 

If Crowley had been smart, he would have agreed. He’d have said that of course Aziraphale was right, there was nothing either of them could do to stop the world ending, that it wasn’t worth even trying. He would have gone back on his initial plan to tell Aziraphale that he was planning to intervene in the Antichrist’s life, and he would have shrugged it off and asked for a bottle of wine. 

Unfortunately, most of Crowley’s brain was still rebooting from when it had crashed a few moments prior, so he didn’t do the smart thing. Instead, he said, “What if I could do something about it?” 

Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed. 

“You can’t. Not without _ — _ not without your bosses finding out.” 

“They don’t really check up,” Crowley said soothingly, noticing the tension that was spreading through Aziraphale’s soft body. “And I _ —  _ I don’t know, I don’t have an exact  _ plan _ , per se, but I might be able to… shift things in Earth’s favor, somehow.” 

Aziraphale looked like someone had replaced his spine with a steel rod, and when he spoke, his voice was dangerously calm. 

“They’ll kill you, Crowley.” 

Crowley had actually considered that, so he gave Aziraphale a tiny smile and sank onto the sofa. 

“They’ll have to catch me at it first. If I do this right, they’ll never know. Probably just think they made a defective Antichrist or something.” He was trying for levity, but from the stricken look on Aziraphale’s face, it wasn’t working. 

“You’re  _ insa _ \- no, actually, this is so  _ infuriatingly  _ something you would do! You just _ — _ you don’t care at all, do you? You have no self-preservation instinct, Crowley.” 

The words  _ “You go too fast for me”  _ burned through Crowley’s mind like an electric current through wood, and he winced. 

“I don’t need a bloody self-preservation instinct, angel,” Crowley said, swinging his legs over an arm of the sofa and tucking his hands behind his head. “If I die, there’s one less demon in the world. No great loss there.” 

“There’s a great loss to  _ me _ , you idiot!” 

It took no time at all for Crowley to decide that he was not going to die. It wasn’t going to happen. Wasn’t an option. It hadn’t been anywhere close to Crowley’s first choice of outcome before, of course, but it had been a possibility. But now Aziraphale was standing a few feet away, trying to hide the shaking of his hands by crushing them behind his back, looking at Crowley like he was well and truly scared of losing him, and so the possibility of death went away. 

Crowley would survive this, because Aziraphale needed him to. 

In a few thousand years of wanting to keep Aziraphale safe and happy, Crowley had never considered that he himself might be a factor in Aziraphale’s happiness. That was… rather a lot to take in all at once, and so Crowley just stayed sprawled on Aziraphale’s couch with his mouth hanging open until Aziraphale sighed and spoke again.

“If you’re going to do this completely idiotic reckless thing, I’m coming with you.” 

“No.” The word was out before Crowley could even think about saying it. “No, no. Absolutely not.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes flashed grey. “You don’t get to  _ say  _ no.” 

“You’ll Fall!” Crowley snapped, hating that fear had caused his voice to break. “Or you’ll die. You _ —  _ no, you can’t.” 

“If you’re trying to stop the apocalypse, Crowley, you’re not doing it alone.” 

Crowley had known Aziraphale for far longer than six thousand years, and in all that time, one thing had never changed. When Aziraphale decided to do something, he was going to do it. He was stubborn like that. 

So Crowley forced himself to say, “Fine. Fine, I’ll let the world end, then.” 

Aziraphale’s shoulders dropped. 

“What? Why?” 

“You’re not going to let me do this without you, and I’m certainly not going to let you Fall for helping me. So, uh. No one’s saving the world.” 

This was a lie, of course. One more lie to keep Aziraphale safe. 

“Fine,” Aziraphale said, turning towards the door. “Now that that’s settled, would you like something to drink?” 

“If you’re offering.” 

Aziraphale left the room with a stiff nod and another sigh. Crowley stared at his retreating back, memorizing the shape of him, remembering that all of this - the lying, the sneaking around, the keeping secrets - was worth it to save Aziraphale. Maybe Aziraphale didn’t want to go back to Heaven just yet, but he would eventually. Crowley might be part of Aziraphale’s happiness for the moment, but one day, he wouldn’t be. And when that day came, Aziraphale needed to be able to go home. He needed to still be an angel, to have the option of rejoining the Host, because Crowley and the world wouldn’t always be enough. 

*********

Crowley was staring out of the window in the Dowling’s back door in disbelief. Aziraphale was standing in the garden, holding a pair of shears and looking around at the rose bushes in confusion. 

What the fuck was he doing here? Crowley had told him that she’d be away for work for a while. She’d even promised to drop by the bookshop whenever she was back in London on a break. That was supposed to be enough. It had always been enough before, and yet the  _ one time  _ that Crowley legitimately needed Aziraphale to stay away, he didn’t. 

She was down the back stairs and striding through the grass in an instant, jaw tightening more with every step. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley hissed, and Aziraphale’s head snapped up. His eyes were grey-tinted and hard, and for a moment, Crowley reconsidered the decision to march out here and tell him off. “What the Heaven are you playing at?” 

“You lied to me.” He sounded  _ hurt,  _ and Crowley felt rather like she should pick up the shovel that was leaning against the shed and start digging her own grave.

“You can’t be here.” 

Aziraphale’s grip tightened on the shears. “You  _ lied  _ to me.” 

“I’m a demon. It’s what I do.” 

“No.” Aziraphale sounded so certain. “No, you don’t.” 

Crowley came very close to laughing at that. If only Aziraphale knew how many times Crowley had lied to him. It had happened so often and for so long that had practically become one of Crowley’s defining personality traits. 

“Whatever, angel,” Crowley said with false flippancy. “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t be here.” 

“I’m not leaving, Crowley.” In another context, those words would have been kind. But Aziraphale had stuck barbs to them, little spines of stubbornness, and they bit into Crowley’s skin. “If you’re going to insist on pursuing this utterly foolish course of action, then I’m not going anywhere.” 

Crowley felt like grabbing onto Aziraphale’s shoulders and shaking him until he came to his senses. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t do this, not if he wanted to stay an angel. He couldn’t go directly against the Divine Plan and still be okay. 

“The night Warlock came to Earth, you said that I don’t have a self-preservation instinct.” Crowley’s chest was heaving, and her throat was warm with anger that was born from protectiveness and love. “Where the fuck is yours?” 

“You’re not doing this alone, Crowley!” 

It had been a very long time since Crowley had heard Aziraphale shout. She wasn’t even sure that she could remember the last time it had happened. It was a jarring thing to hear Aziraphale’s soft voice turn into a dark, rough thing, and Crowley was stunned into silence. 

“I have an interest in the world continuing to turn, too, you know,” Aziraphale said, softer now. “There are a great many things that I would like very much to not lose.” 

“Like crepes,” Crowley muttered faintly. 

Aziraphale smiled at her, thin and fragile. “Like crepes.” 

“Mngh.” 

“Besides,” Aziraphale said, straightening the line of his coat (it was a different one than usual  _ — _ he wouldn’t risk getting dirt on the other one), “I can tell Heaven that I’m influencing the young Antichrist towards the Light.” 

“Right.” 

“That should be enough to convince them, I think.” 

“Sure.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes had softened slightly, and they were closer to their usual clear blue. He was studying Crowley’s face, looking for something, but he stopped after a moment. 

“You don’t have to be alone in this, you know.” 

“I _ — _ ” Crowley broke off, shoving her hands into the pockets of her dress. “I just don’t want you to… I don’t know, die? Die, or Fa _ — _ ” 

“Fall, yes. You’ve said.” Aziraphale took a breath. “I suppose that is a possibility, but what was it that you said? They’ll have to catch me first.” 

“We’ll be careful,” Crowley said, and when Aziraphale smiled, it was bright and wide and beautiful. 

“We will.” 

The door to the house flew open, and Warlock ran down the steps. The remnants of something chocolatey were smeared across his face and down the front of his shirt, and Crowley rolled her eyes. 

“Excuse me, angel. It would appear that someone needs a bath.” 

“Quite,” Aziraphale said, punctuating the word with a short laugh. “And I really should figure out how to tend a garden, I think, if I’m to be a gardener.” 

“You should try talking to the plants,” Crowley called as she walked away, taking a chattering Warlock by his sticky hand and leading him back toward the house. “I’ve had remarkable success with it, personally.” 

The last thing that Crowley heard before she shut the door was something that sounded like “You are just beautiful, aren’t you?” and the gentle snip of trimming shears. She grinned down at Warlock as she carried him to the tub. 

“What, Nanny?”

“Brother Francis’ roses are going to be terrible,” Crowley said, and Warlock became a pile of chocolate-covered giggles. 

*********

“No dog,” Aziraphale said faintly. 

“No dog.” 

“Wrong boy.” 

“Wrong boy.” 

This had all been for nothing. Aziraphale had risked his safety for  _ nothing _ . Crowley had wasted six years of his life fucking with the life of a child, and since that child had not been the Antichrist, it hadn’t mattered at all. Meaningless, worthless,  _ stupid.  _

“Fuck,” Crowley said. “Fucking  _ fuck. _ ” 

Aziraphale swallowed hard, adjusted his tie, tugged at his lapels. “Yes, rather.” 

Crowley drove back into the city in silence. He dropped Aziraphale off at the bookshop, said something about trying to find the right boy, and sped through Soho at a speed that even the Bentley complained about. 

There was something humbling in facing the fact that at some point in the past eleven years, things had gotten terribly out of his control. He had no idea where the real Antichrist was. The boy had been living his life freely and being exactly as evil as he wanted to be, and Crowley had no idea how to find him. 

It was a small consolation to know that Hell didn’t know where the boy was, either. They would presumably figure it out, of course, but that was fine. All Crowley had to do was find the kid first. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said again, cracking the seal on a bottle of tequila. It was going to be a long night. 

*********

“D’you know,” Crowley said as he stepped out of the Bentley, “if you lined up everyone in the whole world and asked them to describe The Velvet Underground, nobody  _ at all  _ would say ‘bebop.’”

Aziraphale shot him a look that was half-glare and half-eye-roll, and Crowley smirked to himself. Bit of brightness at the end of a long and fruitless day. Always a good fallback, poking fun at Aziraphale’s stuffy, outdated tendencies. Aziraphale being a few decades behind on everything was one of the great constants of the universe, and it was an odd source of comfort when the world was ending. 

Crowley hadn’t really expected Aziraphale to dignify his insult with a response, but he certainly hadn’t thought that the next words out of Aziraphale’s mouth would be, “Oh. There’s a book back there.” 

For a panicked fraction of a moment, Crowley thought that he might have left one of the books that Aziraphale had recommended to him over the years in the backseat of the Bentley. He had no desire to spend his evening explaining to Aziraphale that yes, he’d been reading every single book that Aziraphale had ever thought to mention to him since the humans had invented writing. That was likely to lead to the question of why on Earth Crowley would do such a thing, and Crowley had long since resolved that the words  _ Because I’ve been in love with you for longer than you can remember, angel,  _ would never come out of his mouth. 

So Crowley hoped that the book somehow belonged to someone else and said, “Well, it’s not mine. I don’t read books.” 

“It must belong to the young lady you  _ hit  _ with your  _ car _ .” The accusation was clear, but Crowley let it go with a sigh. Aziraphale pulled the door open to retrieve the book. 

“I’m in enough trouble as it is,” Crowley said petulantly. “I’m not going to start returning lost property.”

Crowley was most of the way to making a snarky comment about the girl who’d hit the Bentley with her bike, but he caught the words before they left his mouth. Aziraphale was standing frozen, beautiful hands wrapped around the cover of the book. He was staring at it, mouth slightly open, like he was expecting it to burst into flame. 

“Angel?” 

“I know this book,” Aziraphale said. “I- I  _ know  _ this book.” 

Crowley frowned at him. “Yeah, you own a bookshop.” 

“No. I don’t have a copy, I only know it by name.” 

That was unusual. If Aziraphale wanted a copy of a book, he found one. There may or may not have been some low-level bribery (and once, a tiny bit of theft) involved in the actual obtaining of those books, but the rule stood. Aziraphale owned at least one copy of every book he even so much had the vaguest thought of reading. 

“What is it, then?” 

“An exceedingly rare book of prophecy.” Crowley could barely hear Aziraphale over the noise of the traffic. “The only book of prophecy that is precise and accurate in every respect. There is one known copy still in existence, and it’s the author’s edition.”

Well, shit. 

“Damn,” Crowley said. “And that’s, uh. That’s what you’ve got there, then?” 

“Yes.” Aziraphale sounded like he needed to sit down. 

“Right. D’you… I dunno, d’you think it’ll tell us where the Son of Satan’s been galavanting around for the past eleven years?” 

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” 

“I should probably take a look anyway.” 

If looks could kill, Crowley would have been waiting in line for a new body. Aziraphale’s grip on the book tightened, and he offered Crowley a thin smile. 

“You don’t read, Crowley. You’ve been telling me as much for four thousand years.” 

_ Fuck.  _ Crowley should have known that that particular lie would come back to bite him in the ass one day. 

“Oh,” Crowley said. “Right, yeah.” 

“I’ll be a better set of eyes, I think. More experience, you understand.” 

“Right,” Crowley said again, lifting his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. “Good, yeah. You just _ — _ you give it a look-through, and we’ll meet up to talk about what you find, okay?” 

“Yes, alright.” Aziraphale stopped holding the book like he was trying to press his fingerprints into the leather. This time when he smiled, it was warm again, and Crowley leaned into its glow. 

“Night, angel.” 

Something complicated rippled across Aziraphale’s soft features, but it was gone in an instant. 

“Yes, goodnight, Crowley.” 

“Goodnight,” Crowley repeated, popping open the door to the Bentley and sliding inside. 

It was strange, really, that the end of the world could feel so completely normal. But that was also the reason why Crowley was doing any of this at all; he  _ liked  _ normal. He liked teasing Aziraphale, and he liked Aziraphale teasing him back. He liked that Aziraphale would probably knock the daylights out of anyone who tried to stand between his perfectly manicured hands and a rare book. He liked looking at Aziraphale and believing that it wouldn’t be the last time. 

Crowley was trying to turn the Great Plan on its head because he wanted to keep living this ridiculous life. He was also running out of time to make that happen. 

“There had better be something useful in that bloody book,” Crowley said to the Bentley. Her engine made a noise that sounded almost like an assenting hum, and he patted the dashboard affectionately. 

He wanted to save the world for her, too. Just a little bit. 

*********

“Well?” Crowley asked, stopping his pacing long enough to watch Aziraphale climb the steps into the bandstand. “Any news?” 

“No.” Aziraphale sounded miserable. “I’ve been looking at the book all day, Crowley. If there’s something there, I haven’t found it.” 

“Right.” That was not what Crowley had been hoping to hear. “Fine. Fuck the stupid fucking book, then. I’ll find him myself.” 

“How?”

“I don’t know, angel!” Crowley hated that he was getting angry, hated that he could feel the yellow of his eyes spreading over the white. “I just _ — _ I have to find him. You know that. I have to try to do something.” 

Aziraphale took a steadying breath and laced his fingers across his belly. 

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Where should we start looking?” 

_ We.  _

The time for  _ “we” _ had passed. There was no way that Aziraphale could claim to be doing anything other than going directly against what he’d been told to do, not this close to the end of things. If Aziraphale kept trying to help Crowley, if he followed Crowley to the end of the world, Heaven would kill him. He would Fall first, maybe, but then Heaven would kill him. 

So Crowley swallowed the tightness that was rising in his throat and said, “There’s no ‘we,’ Aziraphale. Not anymore.” 

“What?” 

Funny. Crowley hadn’t known that someone’s voice could wobble on only one syllable. 

“I’m going on alone,” Crowley said, forcibly flat. “You’re not coming.” 

“We can find the boy,” Aziraphale said. “My agents can do it.” 

“And then what?” Crowley’s lips curled in a half-snarl. “We eliminate him?” 

“I- I don’t  _ know,  _ Crowley, but we have to find him! We have to do something.” 

“No, Aziraphale. Not ‘we.’ Me.  _ I  _ have to do something.” 

“Crowley.” It was weak, broken-sounding, and Crowley’s heart fractured. 

“I’m leaving.” 

“You can’t  _ leave,  _ Crowley.” Aziraphale’s eyes were wet, tears welling up against his bottom lids. A line of water that flowed into Crowley’s heart and froze there, painful and sharp. “How long have we been friends?” 

Crowley felt like he was Falling again. He couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t think, and he couldn’t do anything but stand and stare for a moment. In six thousand years, Aziraphale had never referred to Crowley as his friend. Of course Crowley knew that Aziraphale was only saying that because he was desperate and because, for some idiotic reason, he thought he’d be better off if he stayed with Crowley. But it also felt real, and it was shaped like exactly the part of Crowley’s soul that had been missing for millennia. 

But Crowley couldn’t accept that, not now. He couldn’t let Aziraphale think that they were friends, not if he wanted Aziraphale to live. 

So Crowley fixed his face into a sneer and said, “Friends? We’re not friends.” 

Aziraphale fell a half-step backwards, folded over at the middle. He looked like Crowley had punched him, and Crowley’s knuckles burned with the phantom pain of doing so. 

“I don’t even like you,” Crowley said tonelessly. “Never have.” 

“You  _ do _ ,” Aziraphale whimpered. 

“No,” Crowley snapped. “I don’t. You’ve been useful to me, that’s all.” 

“No.” 

“Yes,  _ angel _ .” For the first time, it really sounded like an insult. “Look, I have to go. You do, too  _ —  _ back Upstairs, get dressed in your uniform. Try to explain why you gave your bloody flaming sword away.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said again. Tears were leaving wet tracks across his round cheeks, but Crowley refused to look at them. 

“Have a nice doomsday,” Crowley said, stepping off of the bandstand and striding away. He didn’t turn around, didn’t look back until he felt the shift in the air that signaled Aziraphale’s departure. 

He turned, then, slowly. Took a long, hard look at the bandstand. Stared at the place where Aziraphale had been standing. Committed it to memory, because there was nothing else he could do.

Crowley had caused Aziraphale pain in order to save him, yes, but he’d still done it. He’d taken a sledgehammer to the thing he’d spent his entire life on Earth building, and now he was standing among the broken pieces. 

Crowley didn’t cry until he was safely inside the Bentley. He tore his glasses off his face and chucked them against the window, and then he slammed his palms against the top of the steering wheel, and he screamed. Crowley screamed for six thousand years of unspoken  _ I love you _ s, for an eternity more of never saying those words. He screamed and screamed until he ran out of breath, and then he kept going until he’d screamed himself hoarse. 

And when he was finally done, he put the key in the ignition and turned it, because the world wasn’t over quite yet. 

*********

Ligur was a puddle of goo-covered clothing on the floor, and Hastur was making threats, and Crowley’s home phone was ringing. 

There was exactly one person who would be calling Crowley right now, one completely stupid angel who evidently had a death wish, so Crowley had to think fast. He let the phone ring out, and when the speaker beeped to signal the beginning of a voice message, Crowley started talking. 

“Don’t move,” he commanded with more authority than he actually had, reaching across his desk for the receiver. “There’s something very important you need to know before you disgrace yourself.” 

Too slow. Aziraphale’s voice crackled to life over the speakerphone. 

_ “I know where the Antichrist is,”  _ Aziraphale said.  _ “Crowley, pl- _ ” 

Crowley yanked the phone up to his ear and said, “Yeah, it’s not a good time, got an old friend here,” before slamming it back into its cradle. He probably had imagined Aziraphale’s relieved-sounding sigh, right? It couldn’t have actually been there. 

Now, Crowley thought, was definitely not the time to be thinking about Aziraphale. Now was the time to developa fucking sense of self-preservation, because he needed it if he was going to make it to Tadfield in time to do anything except watch the world burn. 

Except his mind was stuck on Aziraphale. Aziraphale had called him. Aziraphale had somehow figured out where the Antichrist was, and he had wanted to tell Crowley. It was incredibly stupid of him, of course, but Crowley loved him for it. It was also a terrifying thing, though, because it meant that Aziraphale was far more hard-headed than Crowley had realized. There was nothing that Crowley could do to save him now other than try to get the information about the Antichrist and talk him into staying behind. Crowley had already been found out by Hell, and regardless of his actions from here on out, they were going to punish him. There was no need for Aziraphale to suffer a similar fate at the hands of the Archangels. 

So Crowley stuck a wide, energetic smile on his face as he turned to face Hastur. There was a way out of this, a way to get to Aziraphale, and he was going to take it. 

“Well, you’ve certainly passed the test…” 

*********

This was too familiar. The smoke, the ash, the burning scraps of paper carried upwards on twirling blasts of hot air, the flames licking their way up columns made of stone. Crowley had been in a place like this before, running through a burning building full of books with the sickening knowledge that Aziraphale was somewhere inside. 

Soot-caked memories of Alexandria flashed through his mind, moving pictures laid over a backdrop that looked almost the same. Two different continents, two different buildings, the same angel in need of saving. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley’s voice was pitchy but strong, loud even as the heat singed his throat. “Aziraphale! Where the Heaven are you, you idiot?” 

The only answer was the crackling laugh of a thousand tongues of fire. Mocking his pain, amplifying his fear. Shattering him. 

“I can’t find you!” Crowley wasn’t sure that he should keep talking, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He couldn’t hold himself back from the tiniest glimmer of hope, the smallest remnant of a possibility that maybe he could do again what he’d done back then. Maybe he could find Aziraphale before it was too late. Maybe Aziraphale was still here, still huddled in a corner somewhere, so he had to keep calling for him. “For God’s _ — _ for Satan’s _ — _ for  _ Somebody’s  _ sake, where are you?” 

A jet of water from a fire hose broke the window, catching Crowley in the side. He hit the floor in a heap of black-clothed misery, and in that moment, he knew. 

Aziraphale was dead. He had to be. Someone had come for him  _ — _ Upstairs or Down, Crowley couldn’t be sure  _ —  _ but someone had come. Someone had done this. Someone had taken Crowley’s love from him, and Crowley was never going to get him back. 

“You’ve gone,” Crowley said to no one, feeling the two tips of his tongue slide between his teeth. His eyes were as snakelike as they’d been in Eden, and red scales were working their way down his chest while black ones climbed across his shoulders. 

Fury, hot as Hellfire and five hundred times as potent, filled Crowley’s mouth and spilled past his lips. 

“Somebody killed my best friend!”

No, that wasn’t quite right. It was too ordinary, too incomplete. No one was around to care about the truth now, anyway, so what could it hurt to say it? 

“Somebody killed the love of my whole fucking life.” It was a quiet whisper, hoarse with something that might have been smoke and might have been grief. 

Crowley felt hollow. He couldn’t feel his heart beating, and if his lungs were doing their job, he wouldn’t have known. His hands moved without him asking them to, and the right one came to rest against the embossed leather of a book cover. 

It was The Book.  _ The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter,  _ just sitting in the middle of a burning bookshop with barely a blackened edge. 

Crowley had been keeping pieces of the people he’d lost since his family had died in Sodom. He needed a piece of Aziraphale, and this was it. There was nothing else salvageable here. So Crowley picked up the book, beat a few clumps of ash off of the cover, and grabbed his broken glasses from where they’d fallen to the floor. 

He strode out of the bookshop against a backdrop of flame and sorrow, water from the firehose dripped from his hair. He could feel the smudges of ash on his cheeks, could smell the charred chemicals of burnt glue and paper and ink. He looked like he’d been through Hell, probably, which was coincidentally exactly how he felt. 

Well, very nearly. Hell had never hurt this badly. 

Crowley mumbled something to himself about littering and keeping score before dropping his shattered sunglasses into the gutter and crossing to where he’d parked the Bentley in the middle of the road. 

There was no point, now. No use saving the world if the person he wanted to save it for was dead. So Crowley drove thoughtlessly to a bar, left hand resting on the warm leather of the book. He wanted so badly for it to be something else, but it wasn’t. There were gold-pressed letters instead of fluffy white curls, green leather instead of a hundred and eighty year old coat. The inside was full of strangely-spelled words and odd illustrations instead of too much love and a laugh that held more light than all of the stars Crowley had ever made. 

It was the wrong thing sitting in his passenger seat. It should have been an angel, sooty and scared and  _ alive,  _ but it wasn’t. It was a dead thing, a corpse, and if Crowley hadn’t needed it to hold himself together, he would have hated it. 

When Crowley got to the bar, he ordered himself a bottle of top-shelf whiskey and sat down to drink it. Drinking until the world went up in flames; it wasn’t really a gold-star plan, but it was better than nothing. Better than thinking about whether or not Aziraphale had been in pain when he died, too. Anything was better than that. 

He didn’t know exactly how long it had been since he’d bought it, but after a short while the first bottle was empty, which meant that there was a catastrophic lack of booze in Crowley’s glass. 

“Same again,” Crowley called, waving a dizzy hand in the direction of the bar. The man behind it raised an eyebrow, but Crowley silenced his forthcoming protests with a thought. He was going to sit in this bar and drink until the hordes of Hell themselves came and pulled him from this uncomfortable chair, and no bartender with a surprising amount of common sense was going to put a damper on that agenda. 

The second bottle arrived with the comforting thunk of glass on wood, and Crowley reached for it with unsteady hands. He was still working at the cork when the air shifted in a way that felt very much like it did whenever Aziraphale came around. It was some sort of cruel joke that his mind was playing on him, clearly, but that didn’t stop his clumsy tongue from speaking. 

“Aziraphale?” Sweet fucking Someone, he sounded like a child. “Are you here?” 

“Good question,” Aziraphale’s voice said inside of his head, and Crowley’s entire body fizzled with energy. “Not certain, never done this before.” 

This probably wasn’t happening. It probably wasn’t real, and Crowley knew that. But he had to talk to Aziraphale if Aziraphale was talking to him, even if it was all happening in his imagination. He didn’t have a choice. 

Unfortunately, the one thing that Crowley wanted to say was  _ I love you,  _ so he bit down on his tongue until it started to bleed. If this was real, if Aziraphale was actually listening, this would not be the best time for that particular confession. 

“Can you hear me?” Aziraphale sounded nervous, and if he had been there, Crowley would have taken his hand. 

“Course I can hear you.” 

“I’m afraid I’ve rather made a mess of things,” Aziraphale said, words floating on a nervous laugh. “Are you alright, Crowley?” 

“Stuff happened.” Understatement. “I lost my best friend.” 

There it was, then. A large chunk of the truth, lying sticky and booze-scented on the table. If Crowley had been sober, he would have been clearer. He’d have said, “I went looking for you, and you were gone. I thought I lost you, and so I’m sitting here because I lost my best friend, and I didn’t know where else to go or see the point in doing much else.” But Crowley wasn’t sober, so he sat and stared at nothing while his murky-at-best statement rang in his ears. 

“So sorry to hear it,” Aziraphale said gently, and Crowley felt like slamming his forehead into the tabletop. Stupid drunk brain, not saying the right words. “Listen, um, back at my bookshop  _ —  _ there’s a book I need you to get.” 

It took a moment for it to click, and in the meantime, Crowley stumbled his way around a sympathetic sounding “Oh.” But then the realization was there, shining in neon colors. If this was all in his head, Aziraphale would know that the bookshop was gone, because  _ Crowley  _ knew that the bookshop was gone. 

This was real. 

Aziraphale was alive somewhere, and he was talking to Crowley, and Crowley loved him. 

Four minutes later, a vintage blank Bentley was speeding through the streets of London with even less regard for traffic laws than normal, bound for an American military base in an insignificant village in the English countryside. The Bentley carried a book of true prophecies and a demon who was really quite bad at being one, and the demon carried a heart that was cut right down the middle between terror and relief. 

Aziraphale was alive, but Aziraphale was also the world’s biggest idiot. He was going to meet Crowley at the end of the world, going to stand with him against Heaven and Hell and the Horsemen and the actual Son of Satan, and Crowley hadn’t been able to talk him out of it. 

In spite of everything, Crowley found himself smiling. Aziraphale was a brilliant fool with a self-destructive streak as wide as the Nile, but Crowley was in love with him. Crowley was and always had been head-over-heels, arse-over-teakettle in love with Aziraphale, and he was going to get to see him again. Even if it was only for a moment, even if the world still came to a fiery end, Crowley was going to get to see his angel one more time. 

That thought was enough for Crowley. It always had been, really, when he thought about it. Seeing Aziraphale, being with Aziraphale, loving Aziraphale… those things made Crowley who he was. They made him do the impossible, because they made him decide that he could. 

*********

Crowley poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Aziraphale. His flat was filled with a strange sort of silence, somehow comfortable and paranoid at the same time. There was shockingly little to talk about after the world didn’t end when it was supposed to. Crowley and Aziraphale hadn’t actually  _ done  _ a whole lot to stop the Apocalypse — that had mostly been down to the Them, Anathema, and Newt  _ —  _ but it still seemed like there should have been more to say. There had been a grand total of ten words exchanged on the bus ride home, and Crowley couldn’t even remember what they had been. All he knew was that Aziraphale had taken his hand, lacing their fingers together like he’d done in the Bentley in 1991, and neither of them had dared to let go until the bus had screeched to a stop in front of Crowley’s flat. 

Aziraphale was watching Crowley now, spinning his gold ring around on his pinky finger. He was nervous. Probably worried about what Heaven and Hell would do to them in the morning. Probably, like Crowley, unsure what to say or do until then. 

“Do you, uh. Do you want to take a shower?” It was a pitiful offer, but Crowley needed one himself, so he thought he should give Aziraphale the chance to take one first. He’d never had a houseguest in this flat before (unless you counted Hastur and Ligur, which Crowley definitely did not), and he wasn’t quite sure how the etiquette worked in this century. 

“No, thank you.” 

“Okay.” Crowley took a long drink from his glass, forgetting that he should probably try to enjoy it because he was likely going to die in the morning. “Well, I’m gonna have one. Got a bit of… bit of my Bentley on me, and I’d like to get it off.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes got uncomfortably soft with sympathy. 

“I didn’t even think to say,” Aziraphale said, and his hand twitched toward Crowley’s. He held it back, though, letting it fall a few inches from the tips of Crowley’s fingers. “I’m sorry about your car. I know how much it meant to you.” 

“Thanks, angel.” Crowley stepped away from the counter, leaving his wine mostly unfinished. “Make yourself at home _ — _ I’ll be back in a few minutes.” 

“Yes, okay,” Aziraphale mumbled absently, settling into one of Crowley’s very uncomfortable chairs with a heavy sigh. 

When Crowley first got into the shower, he didn’t move. He let the warm water wash over him, soaking his hair and dripping off of his eyelashes and nose and lips, leaving clear trails across his skin before flowing over his fingertips. Some of the water from his hair ran into his mouth, and he tasted ash and burnt motor oil. 

Unbidden, silent tears began to slide down his cheeks, mixing with the shower water as they fell to the floor. He didn’t even know why he was crying, but he felt like he’d die if he didn’t. His chest was tight and the smell of fire and gasoline and Aziraphale’s cologne were caught in his nose, and the world hadn’t ended.

So Crowley cried. 

He’d said some indescribably cruel things to Aziraphale earlier. Unforgivable, terrible, poisonous things. Crowley had said them in the vain hope that Aziraphale would give up, that he’d leave Crowley to take the hit, that he’d be safe. But Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to be safe. He’d kept pushing, had gone to extremely desperate lengths to stand beside Crowley at the end of the world, and then he’d let Crowley bring him home. 

In the course of a day, Crowley had sabotaged his friendship with the love of his life, thought he’d lost that same love in a fire, and gotten all of it back again at an airfield in a tiny town no one but the not-so-evil Antichrist and his friends actually gave two fucks about. It had been an emotional rollercoaster of a day, so Crowley pressed his palms against the wall of his shower and took a few deep breaths. 

He reached for his shampoo eventually, and he let his thoughts continue to run wild in his head while he scrubbed dirt and grease out of his hair. 

Somehow, impossibly, Aziraphale didn’t hate him. Aziraphale could have had a million justifications for hating Crowley, if he wanted them, but he didn’t. He hadn’t said a word to Crowley about what had happened at the bandstand, hadn’t asked for an apology even though he deserved one. No, Aziraphale was content to take Crowley’s hand on the bus ride home from what was supposed to be the end of the world. He was happy to sit in Crowley’s flat and drink Crowley’s wine, and he was apparently planning to be with Crowley until Heaven and Hell came for them both. 

Crowley finished washing the grime off of his skin, scrubbing a little too hard at the place above his heart. Aziraphale deserved an apology, so Crowley was going to give one to him. 

When Crowley walked back into the main room of his flat a few minutes later, Aziraphale was gone. His wine glass stood empty next to Crowley’s full one, and the chair he’d been sitting in was still covered in creases from where Aziraphale’s body had pressed into it. 

_ Fuck.  _ Crowley had given Aziraphale the perfect opportunity to slip away. Maybe Aziraphale  _ was  _ angry, maybe he was upset enough to leave without saying goodbye, maybe he  _ didn’t  _ want to spend his last hours with Crowley. 

There was a soft scuffling sound from the door to the other hallway, and Crowley whirled around. Aziraphale was standing in the doorway with a gentle smile on his lips, looking as beautiful as he always did, and Crowley felt like he might faint from loving him. 

“Hi,” Crowley said stupidly. “Thought you might’ve _ — _ never mind, it’s fine. Hi.” 

“Hello.” Aziraphale was still smiling, leaning slightly against the grey wall. “Feel better?” 

“Bit, yeah. You okay?” 

“Fine.” 

“Good.” 

There was a different sort of softness in Aziraphale’s face, and his eyes were bright and blue. Silence fell, and Crowley didn’t know what to do. He knew that he had to apologize, had to start somewhere, but he didn’t have a clue where. 

“I like your plants,” Aziraphale said after a moment, and the jumble of words in Crowley’s head that had begun to organize themselves into sentences fell back into a pile again. 

“What?” 

“Your plants. They’re lovely.” 

“Um,” Crowley said. “Thanks.” 

Aziraphale’s cheeks pinkened slightly, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “I may have told them that, actually, and _ — _ ” 

“You  _ what _ ?” Crowley was moving toward the door in an instant, wrapping a thin hand around Aziraphale’s elbow as he breezed by. 

It was an automatic instinctual thing, reaching for Aziraphale, and Crowley half expected Aziraphale to flinch away. But he didn’t. He let Crowley take him by the arm and drag him into the hallway, and when Crowley looked down at him, he was grinning. 

And then Crowley looked down the hall toward his plants. His jaw fell open with a tiny pop. 

He hadn’t even known that most of them were  _ capable  _ of flowering. But there they were, blooming in different sized droplets of brilliant color on a background of black and grey and green. 

“Oh,” Crowley said, forcing a huffy edge into his voice. “Oh, I can’t believe you’ve_—_ _angel_, look what you’ve done to my plants!” 

Aziraphale giggled, a clear bright sound, and Crowley’s heart flopped backwards in his chest. 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” 

“No,” Crowley protested, but the corners of his mouth curled upward anyway. “No, it’s not ‘wonderful,’ they’re going to have expectations now…” He dropped Aziraphale’s arm and walked toward his little garden. When he reached out to touch a leaf, it barely trembled at all. 

“I like them,” Aziraphale said from behind him, and Crowley smiled. 

“It’s going to take me  _ years  _ to get them back to _ — _ wait, did you get my ficus to flower? How did you _ — _ that’s not supposed to be  _ possible  _ indoors, did you use a miracle on this?” 

“It just needed a little extra love.” 

Crowley groaned. “‘Love,’ he says. Stupid bloody angel, loving every stupid bloody thing.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said softly. “Every single thing.” 

For some reason, Crowley knew that this was the moment for his apology, so he turned to face Aziraphale and slipped his fingers into his front pockets. Aziraphale was still looking at him with that too-intense softness, catching Crowley’s eye with a twinkling smile. 

He was beautiful, and Crowley loved him. Loved the mystery of him, loved that he didn’t always understand everything about him. Loved that there was still more of Aziraphale to learn about, still more of Aziraphale to love. 

But they were out of time, now. There would be no more new things, not after tomorrow. These few hours were the last ones Crowley would have with the love of his almost-immortal life, and he was going to use them to make up for every mistake he’d ever made and every lie he’d ever told. For these last hours, Crowley was going to love Aziraphale with all of himself, and he was going to be the best friend that Aziraphale had always deserved but had never gotten. 

So Crowley said, “Angel,” and he watched Aziraphale smile at him. 

“Yes?” 

“I’m sorry.” Aziraphale’s forehead creased in confusion, but Crowley forged ahead. “I’m so sorry for what I said before. We’re friends, of course we’re friends. And I do like you_—_ I _do_, please, you have to believe that I do. I like you, I lo_—_ _like _you so much.” 

“I know.” 

“I only said those things because I thought you might give up if I did. I didn’t mean them, I didn’t mean any of them.” Crowley’s breath was coming quick now, short puffs of air hissing past his lips. It was a good thing that his hands were in his pockets, too, because they were shaking. 

“I know,” Aziraphale said again, but Crowley kept talking. 

“Please, angel _ — _ Aziraphale. Please, Aziraphale. You have to know that I’m sorry, you have to believe that I’d never say things like that and mean them, not to you _ — _ ” 

“Crowley, you silly old snake, I forgive you.” 

The rest of Crowley’s apology got tangled around his tongue and mashed itself against his teeth. 

“What?” 

“I forgive you.” There they were again, those impossible words, hanging in the air between Aziraphale’s lips and Crowley’s ears. They rang inside of Crowley’s head, too, somehow forceful in their tenderness, and Crowley felt his knees go weak. 

“You can’t,” Crowley said haltingly. “Demon, remember? Unforgivable, ‘s what I am.” 

“No,” Aziraphale said, and his fingers stroked a line down Crowley’s forearm. “You’re not. You’re not, because I forgive you. Do you see?” 

“Ngh.” 

“I forgive you.” 

“Aziraphale.” 

“I  _ forgive  _ you.” 

Crowley’s knees really did give out then. He fell forward, trying to catch himself on unsteady legs, and wound up with his hands balled into white-knuckled fists around handfuls of Aziraphale’s waistcoat. 

“Sorry,” Crowley mumbled, righting himself and trying unsuccessfully to smooth the wrinkles out of the fabric. “Just _ — _ ‘s a lot, y’know?” 

“No need to apologize.” 

“Mmngh.” 

A patch of skin on Crowley’s left wrist tingled with an all too familiar crawling sensation. Crowley knew without looking down that scales had appeared there, black and shiny and horrid, and he tried to force them away. His eyes, too, had gone completely yellow. He hated when they did that, because it was out of his control. He wouldn’t have picked this moment to remind Aziraphale that he was a monster, and yet his stupid body refused to stay static. 

Crowley was focusing on lowering his heart rate and calming himself down when he felt Aziraphale’s warm hand curl around his wrist. A wide, soft thumb rubbed against the scales, and when Crowley shivered, he felt more break out along the length of his spine. 

“Do you know, Crowley, there’s something that I’ve never done that I would very much like to do.” 

“Is there?” Crowley’s voice sounded distant to his own ears. 

“Yes. Would you mind terribly if I did it?” 

Crowley stared down at him. “Now?” 

“Yes, now.” 

“Will you have to go somewhere? Because I’m not sure it’s entirely safe out there, given that the combined forces of Heaven and Hell are working very hard to come up with a way to kill us.” 

Aziraphale laughed at him, gentle and high. 

“I can do it right here, if you’re willing to abide the short inconvenience.” 

“Sure,” Crowley said, finally managing to shift his eyes back to their normal human-ish shape. 

And then all of his progress ground to a screeching halt, because Aziraphale’s beautiful arms were sliding around Crowley’s thin waist, and Crowley was being pulled closer to Aziraphale’s body, and Aziraphale’s hands came to rest on Crowley’s back. 

It wasn’t until Aziraphale sighed against Crowley’s chest that Crowley realized he was being held. It took ten more seconds for him to realize that he was very much not holding Aziraphale in return, which was something he quickly remedied. 

Aziraphale was hugging him. They were standing in the middle of Crowley’s plants, and Crowley’s hair was still wet, and Aziraphale was holding him. 

_ “There’s something I’ve never done that I’d very much like to do.”  _

This was it?  _ This _ , hugging Crowley, was the thing that Aziraphale had never done but had wanted to do? It didn’t seem like a thing worth bothering over. 

But Crowley wasn’t about to lodge any complaints with the universe about it. Instead, he pressed himself closer, allowing himself to forget for just one moment about all of the people he’d lost and all of the times he’d failed. Crowley wrapped Aziraphale in his arms and held him like he’d been dreaming of doing for six thousand years, and he let himself rest.

After a few long moments, Aziraphale’s hands dropped away from Crowley’s back, stroking Crowley’s ribs and hips as he pulled himself back. 

“What, you’ve never hugged anyone before?” Crowley was trying for indifference, but his voice was sandpaper. 

“I’ve never hugged  _ you _ .”

Crowley made a strangled sort of noise. “Right.” 

Aziraphale was looking at him again, eyes flicking over all of the edges and angles of Crowley’s face. 

Eventually, he said, “There’s one more thing,” and Crowley resisted the urge to reach out and pull him close again.

“Go ahead,” Crowley heard himself say. Aziraphale should have everything he wanted, everything he’d ever so much as hoped for. 

This time, Aziraphale’s hands landed somewhere else. One came to rest against the line of Crowley’s jaw, brushing his cheekbone in a gentle but intentional caress. The other wrapped around to the back of Crowley’s neck, sliding through the short hair and settling there, spread wide and holding firm. 

“What are you doing?” Crowley managed to choke out. 

“This,” Aziraphale said, and kissed him. 


	14. London, 2019 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time since before the Fall, Aziraphale has kissed Crowley. Crowley, of course, panics about it. 
> 
> Body-swap shenanigans and lots more kisses ensue, and eventually Crowley works up the courage to say something that he's been dying to say for a few thousand years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry about the delay in posting this one - it's been an absolutely crazy few weeks for me because of all of the changes due to coronavirus! 
> 
> Speaking of which, how are y'all doing? I hope you are well. If you need to talk or just want to say hi and yell about Good Omens, I'd love to hang out over on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hope-inthedark)!
> 
> Back to the business at hand. This chapter was initially going to include a lot more than this, but the last part really grabbed my hand and dragged me along on a wild run, so I stopped it here. It's still really long, so I hope you enjoy it! In terms of the future of this story: there should be one more chapter and an epilogue, and then possibly some soft one-shots at some point in the future. 
> 
> Thanks to the folks over on the Ace Omens discord server for all of the help and encouragement, and to the lovely @Stars_Sea_Sky for being the best preview reader! Y'all are wonderful. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: language, depiction of anxiety, mention of nightmares involving character death. Also, softness and snuggles.

Crowley’s brain was full of static. Aziraphale was kissing him. Aziraphale’s hands were in his hair, and the buttons of Aziraphale’s waistcoat were pressing into Crowley’s stomach, and Aziraphale was  _ kissing  _ him. 

Had it been like this before? Was Crowley’s memory truly that weak, or was this really different? It felt different. Aziraphale was so  _ warm,  _ and when Crowley reached up to cup his face, a happy huff of hot breath skated across Crowley’s lips. 

Crowley had refused to let himself think about the possibility that this might ever happen again. They were friends and that was all, and Crowley was happy with that. Perfectly content to be around Aziraphale for the short remainder of his life. But then Aziraphale had pulled Crowley’s head down and was kissing him, and all of Crowley’s thoughts about the end of the world and the end of their lives vanished in a haze of adoration and disbelief. 

Aziraphale sighed and moved in closer, and it sent a lightning strike down Crowley’s spine. His internal processing systems jumped back into action, mind set off racing at four times the speed of light. What were they doing? Aziraphale couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this to Aziraphale. They had to stop. 

Crowley’s hands slipped over Aziraphale’s soft cheeks and came to rest on broad shoulders, and then he was shoving Aziraphale away. He tried to ignore Aziraphale’s blue eyes turning to grey and the cartoonish way the smile slid off of his kiss-reddened lips. 

“Crowley, what—” 

“Wings,” Crowley rasped out. “Angel, your wings. Show me your wings.” 

Somehow, his fingers had slid down Aziraphale’s back, searching frantically for the hard lines of shoulder blades beneath fabric and skin. Anxiety raged through Crowley, spreading pins and needles through his bloodstream and wrapping too-short chains around his chest. Breaking his ribs, crushing his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Couldn’t see anything but the way Aziraphale’s forehead was scrunching itself into thin lines. 

“Crowley, are you quite alright?” 

“ _ Wings. _ ” It was softer but thicker from lack of air, and Crowley nearly gagged on it. “Please.” 

Aziraphale made a little shrugging motion, and his wings snapped forward through a gap in spacetime, a few loose feathers falling to Crowley’s grey floor and coming to rest on the flowers of his plants. 

White. 

They were white. Not the faintest hint of grey or black anywhere. No charred smell from burning. 

Aziraphale’s heavy hands were smoothing away nonexistent wrinkles in Crowley’s shirt, rubbing easy lines down his sides. He was breathing slowly, and his heartbeat was steady, and he was studying Crowley’s face with pinched-together eyebrows and a slight tilt of his head.

“What’s my name, Crowley?” 

“Aziraphale.” It was automatic. Crowley’s favorite word, always just off the edges of his tongue until he needed it. He knew it, hadn’t forgotten it, which meant that Aziraphale was still himself. Still a foolish principality with an affinity for fancy soaps and French breads and expensive red wines. 

Still an angel, even after he’d kissed Crowley. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said gently. “Aziraphale.” 

“How are you still— how have you not—” 

“Fallen?” Aziraphale’s white wings slipped away again, sliding back into a different plane of existence. “Crowley, my dearest, kissing you is not the thing I’ve done today that’s worthy of a Fall.” 

“Hmngh.” Crowley was still staring at the place where Aziraphale’s wings had been - they needed tending to, had Aziraphale even touched them in the past century? - unable to wrap his head around the fact that they were still the wings of an angel. Not one of the Fallen. 

“I defied Heaven today in more ways than the humans have come up with numbers to count, darling,” said Aziraphale with a tiny half-laugh. “Certainly that would be the thing I’d Fall for. Not for this. Never for this.” 

_ My dearest. Darling.  _ Those words were rattling around in Crowley’s ears, catching on the parts inside that caused him to keep his balance, and he fell forward slightly. 

“You should sit.” 

“Ngh.” 

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and Crowley found himself lying on his uncomfortable sofa with his head on Aziraphale’s thigh. Plump fingers hovered above his head for a moment before sinking into Crowley’s hair, breaking it into disorganized shower-damp clumps. 

An involuntary whine threw itself out between Crowley’s lips. Aziraphale was stroking his hair, and Aziraphale was smiling down at him with those impossibly warm pink lips, and Crowley didn’t know what to do with that. 

“Why did you?” It was an incomplete question, but it was all that Crowley could manage, and Aziraphale caught its meaning right away. 

“Because I never have,” he said simply. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for quite some time, but I haven’t. We haven’t ever… done that. Been like that.” 

“Right.” Crowley stifled a wounded-sounding whimper. 

Something complicated ran across the curves of Aziraphale’s face, and his fingers stumbled through Crowley’s hair. 

“Do you not, er. Want to kiss me?” 

_ Fuck.  _

“No,” Crowley said urgently, sitting up so quickly that it made him dizzy. Aziraphale’s hands dropped into his lap like Crowley had burned him, and an embarrassed blush colored the entire expanse of skin from his curls to his bowtie. What had Crowley said? Had he got it wrong? Was the right answer to that question  _ yes  _ or  _ no _ ?

Aziraphale had started to stand up, muttering something under his breath. He wasn’t meeting Crowley’s eyes, and he was spinning his ring around his pinky like he was trying to carve down to the bone. 

“Wait, angel, don’t— hang on, let me just—”

Crowley was scrambling for words that weren’t coming, his voice gone squeaky and unsure. If there was a way to say what Crowley was thinking, he couldn’t find it, so he decided to stop trying to talk. He wrapped his hands around Aziraphale’s wrist and pulled him back down onto the sofa, and then he pressed their lips together. 

It was clumsy and awkward (Crowley had missed a bit — he’d caught as much of Aziraphale’s mouth as he had chin and cheek), but Aziraphale made a sort of happy-sobbing sound anyway. 

Crowley moved back after a moment, looking at Aziraphale to make sure that he understood. Aziraphale had to know that Crowley wanted to kiss him. Had to be certain of that. Crowley never  _ didn’t  _ want to kiss him. 

“Fucking. Fucking  _ words, _ ” Crowley said with a nervous laugh. “Sorry.” 

Aziraphale looked a little like he’d been hit over the head with a mallet, an involuntary smile on his pretty lips. 

“Whatever are you sorry for, you ridiculous thing?” 

“No idea.” 

“Don’t be, then.” Aziraphale was smiling at him. It was absurd, really, how much Crowley loved him. 

“Bad at words sometimes.” 

A gentle laugh rumbled through Aziraphale’s body, and Crowley couldn’t stop himself from pressing a hand to the spot above Aziraphale’s heart. Felt it beating, felt the vibrations of that sunlit laugh. The words “I know you are, dear,” trailed at the end of it, and when Crowley looked up with an expression of mock offense on his face, Aziraphale’s blue eyes were full of a hundred thousand pinpricks of light. 

It looked like someone had taken the stars that Crowley had once made and thrown them into the blue sky of day. Put them where they never had been, where it would have been beautiful for them to be. 

“Should try with the words,” said Crowley, and the stars in Aziraphale’s eyes went supernova. 

“If you like.” Gentle, kind. No expectations, no pressure. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley started slowly, loosening his grip on Aziraphale’s wrist. “Kiss me. When—whenever you want.” 

He didn’t say  _ We’ve got a few hours until it’s over. Kiss me until then.  _

“Right now?” 

“Y-yeah.” 

This kiss was confident and fearless, and Crowley collapsed into it. Being able to trust something kind was something that Crowley had forgotten how to do — he’d always trusted Aziraphale, of course, but not without some overwhelming amount of anxiety or fear of loss. It would take time (time that they probably didn’t have at this point) for Crowley to remember how to trust that something good was going to stay. 

When Aziraphale pulled away, his cheeks and lips were pink, and there was an odd feeling in Crowley’s chest. Warm and soft, but somehow also terrifying. It took a moment for him to realize what it was, but the moment he knew, he lost his breath. 

Freedom. The freedom to say whatever he wanted. There wasn’t much to lose, anymore. 

“Aziraphale.” It was mostly a whisper, barely a word, and it trembled when it hit the air. 

“Yes?” 

“Aziraphale, I—”

Heavy, warm fingers stroked the short hair on Crowley’s neck and slid forward to brush over his ears. The touches were gentle and kind and altogether too much for Crowley to handle, and yet he turned his head to press his cheek further into Aziraphale’s palm. 

Crowley could hear Aziraphale’s breath catch in surprise, so he shifted a bit more. His lips were against Aziraphale’s hand, his breath warming skin that was already so beautifully hot. Crowley closed his eyes and kissed the center of Aziraphale’s palm. 

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley was entirely sure he hadn’t meant to say anything at all. 

In six thousand years, the world had never spun this fast, and the time that governed it had never moved this slow. The words that Crowley hadn’t been free to say since the day he’d Fallen were dancing through his mind and flirting with his tongue.  _ I love you, I love you, I love you.  _ They formed a golden chain, bonds forged by the fires of all the times he’d wanted to say those words but hadn’t. He’d put a padlock on that chain so long ago and chucked away the key, never daring to think that he might need it again. 

But Aziraphale had brought the key back to him and was pressing it past his lips with every passing second. 

_ Say it,  _ Crowley growled to himself.  _ Just say it.  _ He could feel tiny scales forcing their way through the skin along his spine, and he itched to make them go away. He didn’t want to say this thing, this most important thing, as a monster. 

Hope was a tiny thing nestled deep inside of Crowley’s head, and it pulled now at the strings of his memory. Aziraphale had never shied away from the parts of him that were dark and squirming and twisted. Instead, Aziraphale had embraced them. He’d touched Crowley’s scales with tender strokes of his fingers, had stared into Crowley’s snake-slitted yellow eyes on more than one occasion. Had never so much as commented on the way Crowley’s tongue split into two when he was angry or afraid or under stress.

Aziraphale had never seen Crowley as a monster, and Crowley’s little spark of hope clung to that. 

“Angel.” It was a start, but nothing else followed it. The rest had gotten caught in Crowley’s throat, and he was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to get it out. 

“What is it, darling?” 

That word was flint in Crowley’s chest. His eyes snapped open and caught on Aziraphale’s, holding them captive. 

And then Crowley said, “Aziraphale, I love you,” and he waited for the sky to fall. 

It didn’t. In all honesty, Crowley probably wouldn’t have noticed if it had, because Aziraphale had dragged him down for another kiss and that was really quite distracting. 

“Az—” Crowley tried to say between kisses. “Ang— mmph, angel— Azir—  _ fuck _ .” 

“Will you shut up?” Aziraphale sounded almost annoyed, but when Crowley looked down at him, his eyes were still full of stars. “Shut up, shut up. Kiss me.” 

Crowley did, soundly. Stuck his hands into cotton-fluff curls, mashed his body against Aziraphale’s, crushed their lips together hard enough to bruise. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said when they pulled apart, looking as dazed as Crowley felt. 

“Mmnguh.” 

One of Aziraphale’s warm hands had landed between Crowley’s shoulder blades, and it began to press swirling patterns there. Aziraphale was the one holding Crowley’s gaze this time, all power and authority and impossibly soft affection, and Crowley felt close to melting. 

“I had hoped, you know.” Aziraphale’s voice was soft. “You did things sometimes that made me think you might, but I was never quite sure.” 

There was a part of Crowley’s heart that had been hollowed out in the Fall. It was a place that had once been filled with endearments and love proclamations that had been spoken by a voice much higher and softer and brighter than Crowley’s own, and now it was aching. Aziraphale hadn’t said those words back, not yet, and so that hollow place was an echo chamber of nothing. 

“I do. I have,” Crowley said, desperately insistent.  _ You have no idea how long.  _ “I love you.”

Something like a sunset bloomed over Aziraphale’s cheeks, and he put a hand right over Crowley’s heart. Spread his heavy fingers out, pushed against Crowley’s chest. Took a shaky breath and said, “Crowley. My dearest, my darling. I love you, too.” 

The words rang in Crowley's ears, a symphony with the sound of his racing heartbeat.  _ I love you, too.  _ Over and over and over, a scratched and beaten record on a turntable with a needle that refused to move. The piece of his heart that had lain cold and hollow for millennia grew warm again, soft and heavy with the weight of those words. 

"You — " Crowley started and stopped, words catching on snags between his brain and his mouth. "You. You love me." 

Aziraphale laughed, clear and bright, and took Crowley by the hand. 

"I don't believe I ever haven't, truthfully. It just took me a few thousand years to realize it."

Crowley felt like he was a broken second away from fainting, so he clung to Aziraphale's hand as he folded his long body into the space between arms that still fit like they were made to hold him. 

Then, very quietly, with his mouth against Aziraphale's chest, Crowley mumbled, "Say it again?" 

"I love you," Aziraphale said softly. 

Humans had invented millions of words since Eden. They’d been trading them back and forth with each other, writing them down and binding them into books and passing them along. Making new ones, too, as time went on. But all of those words came to nothing in Crowley’s head, because none of them described the feeling that was burning through his veins and gathering in his lungs. 

It wasn’t entirely a good feeling. It  _ hurt _ , tearing into his skin and biting at the muscle of his heart. Wounds that had been bleeding for thousands of years and a stretch of timeless infinity before that were being sewn shut. They'd leave scars, and Crowley knew that. There would always be something there, permanent and not-beautiful and rough, but that was okay. The pain was worth it this time. 

But it didn’t only hurt. It felt like dancing and laughing and walking the line between tipsy and drunk, all pink-colored lighting and silk sheets and exactly the right music at exactly the right time. Crowley’s heart hadn’t known this kind of happiness, this kind of  _ hope _ , since he’d gone by another name. He hadn’t been so certain of his ability to make something beautiful since the last time that he’d shaken starstuff off of his hands and brushed light-dust out of Aziraphale’s hair. 

For the second time in his life, Crowley decided that dying was, quite simply, not in the cards for him. He wouldn’t give this up, not now. Not when he’d just got it back. So Crowley hauled himself out of his thoughts and straightened up, smiling at the way Aziraphale’s body stretched up after him. Chasing him. He refocused his attention on Aziraphale, letting his eyes skim over sound cheeks and pretty lips and (slightly mussed) white hair. 

And for once, Crowley didn’t make himself memorize it. He didn’t force himself to catalogue every detail, because he vowed that he would get to feel all of this again. 

“You love me,” Crowley said slowly, tasting the words. It wasn’t a question this time. 

“Yes.” 

“I love you.” It was addicting, saying that. Crowley didn’t want to stop. 

A little smile, bright and beautiful. “Yes.” 

_ He loves me,  _ Crowley thought, and then he kissed Aziraphale again. Just because he could. Just because he wanted to. Just because he loved him. 

*********

On the night that the world was supposed to end (but didn’t do so thanks to the efforts of four small children, a former hellhound, a not-computer-engineer, a witch, and an angel and a demon who really weren’t quite those things at all), Time left a certain flat in Mayfair. It turned on its heel, shook its head, and walked out the door, because it had no business there. 

Inside that flat, an angel and a demon were lying together on a bed with sheets the color of red wine, whispering in soft voices. They were devising a way to fuck up the decidedly not ineffable plans of Heaven and Hell. This wasn’t exactly unusual; they’d spent the better part of six thousand years already doing something along those lines. The unusual bit was the  _ way  _ they were doing it. 

The demon was lying at a very strange angle, his spine doing something that human spines had not been designed to do. His fiery head rested on the rise of the angel’s stomach, and the angel’s fingers were running through his hair. The angel’s other hand was occupied as well, squeezing and stroking the thin hand that was interlocked with it. 

None of their previous planning meetings had gone anything like this. 

The angel said something that made the demon scramble to arrange his vertebrae into something vaguely human as he sat up. They were both babbling excitedly, and a satisfied smirk crawled across thin lips as the demon levered his body down over the angel’s, coming to a stop when their noses touched. 

“This had better bloody work,” said the demon, smoky-voiced and sharp-shouldered. 

And then the demon kissed the angel, firm and solid and achingly loving. For a moment (or what would have been one, if Time had stuck around for the show), everything in the flat was different. A half-empty glass of wine on the kitchen counter turned to water. The television set became a bookshelf. Cold grey walls took on shimmering color. A stone eagle became a snake. And in a box tucked inside of a safe set deep in the wall, a scrap of blue ribbon turned orange. 

It was over almost as soon as it had begun, and the demon pulled away once more. A funny sort of smile was dancing across his lips, wider and toothier than his usual variety. Beneath him, the angel raised an eyebrow. 

“Hello, darling,” the demon said. His voice hadn’t changed, but somehow he sounded more proper. More like he was about to comment on the wine or tell you to please step away from the merchandise, the shop was very much closed. 

When the angel laughed, it was tinged with a warm sort of darkness. The end of it got lost, gathered up and caught by another kiss. 

In the morning, Time walked back into that Mayfair flat with its hands in its pockets, and it found the angel and the demon staring out the window in shock. On the street below, a shiny black car that really shouldn’t have been there rested against the kerb. It seemed to be waiting. 

“Huh,” said the angel. “That looks like —”

“That’s your car.”

“Yeah.” 

The demon fidgeted, long fingers reaching up towards his collar. He seemed surprised when his fingers hit the skin of his neck, and he hastily shoved his hands into his pockets. 

“I rather wonder if anything else has been restored,” the demon said, trying to sound lazy but coming off a bit too posh. “Something like—” 

“The bookshop.” 

“Yes.” 

“I’ll go take a look,” the angel said before reaching up for a kiss. “Park at noon, then?” 

“Noon, yes.” 

The air shifted and the angel disappeared, leaving the demon alone in his flat with nothing but his thoughts and the faint smell of sulphur. 

*********

“We should take the car,” Crowley had said. Aziraphale had agreed, so they’d hailed a cab back to Mayfair, and now they were sitting in the Bentley. 

Crowley would have started running his skinny hands over every inch of the dashboard if Aziraphale hadn’t started kissing him the second he closed the door. Currently, Aziraphale’s hands were tugging at Crowley’s hair like he was trying to tie it into knots, and Crowley found that he had exactly zero complaints about that. 

They’d done it. They had really, truly,  _ actually _ done it, and they were free. 

“Mmn,” Crowley hummed against Aziraphale’s mouth, his own lips red and tingling. “Aren’t we supposed to be going to the Ritz?”

“In a minute.”

“M’kay.” 

It was longer than a minute. 

By the time they got to the Ritz, Crowley was feeling more than slightly winded and quite a lot out-of-sorts, and he didn’t realize until halfway through dinner that he’d never fixed his hair. 

*********

It had been a month since the world didn’t end, and for the most part, not much had changed. Crowley and Aziraphale saw much more of each other, but they still did the same things they’d always done. They went out to lunch and dinner, and Aziraphale dragged Crowley along to every new bakery he came across. They drank vintage wines in the back of Aziraphale’s bookshop, spiraling into nonsense conversations when they got too drunk to carry on with coherent ones. Crowley listened to Aziraphale fawn over his books and complain about the customers who tried to buy them, and he did his best to tempt a few of the more stubborn humans into remembering that they’d left the oven on. They went to St. James’s and fed the ducks. Crowley took Aziraphale to the National Gallery, and Aziraphale allowed himself to be talked into going to see one of those newfangled moving pictures at the cinema. There were jokes about Aziraphale’s wardrobe and snide comments about the tightness of Crowley’s trousers, and everything was normal. 

Crowley didn’t notice the normal, though. He noticed the things that were different. 

Every time Aziraphale kissed Crowley, Crowley’s world lost the idea of gravity. Every time Aziraphale said, “I love you,” Crowley’s heart skipped a beat. Every endearment that passed Aziraphale’s lips left a pink flush on Crowley’s cheeks and ears. Every moment that Crowley spent cuddled next to Aziraphale seemed to last forever and no time at all, and it made him dizzy. 

Aziraphale had adjusted to these differences quickly, sliding into this new routine as if it was exactly what he’d always done. He smiled and laughed and teased, and he was exactly the same person that he always had been. But Crowley wasn’t. Crowley was different, because it was impossible for him not to be. For the second time in Crowley’s life, Aziraphale loved him, and Aziraphale’s love had always been the kind that changed people. 

Crowley also wasn’t sleeping, and one night, Aziraphale noticed. 

“Darling,” Aziraphale said, brushing a warm hand over Crowley’s shoulders and delivering a soft squeeze to his bicep. Crowley’s heart kicked him in the ribs. “Have you slept at all?” 

“Course I have. Slept for a few years straight, once.” 

“I  _ know,  _ Crowley. You’ve said.” 

“Why’re you asking, then?” Crowley knew very well why Aziraphale was asking. Bloody observant angel. 

“I’m asking if you’ve slept since the Apocalypse, dear.”

For a moment, Crowley thought about lying. Just say yes and move on, and everything will be okay. But his days of lying to Aziraphale were over. The last time Crowley had lied, he’d used his words to cut to deep into Aziraphale’s very soul, and he refused to do that again. 

_ “We’re not friends. I don’t even like you!”  _

No. No more lies. 

So Crowley said, “Nah. Got better things to do.” 

Aziraphale’s brow crinkled, his eyes going soft with concern. “I thought you enjoyed sleeping.” 

“I do,” said Crowley, pressing a kiss to the back of Aziraphale’s plump hand and smiling at the pink glow that flooded his pretty cheeks. “Like you more.” 

“Charmer,” Aziraphale said, but he leaned over and kissed Crowley anyway. 

“That’s me, yep.” 

“Ever so charming.” 

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” 

“Not  _ everywhere,  _ dear.” 

“Most places.” 

Aziraphale laughed at him. “Which places?” 

“Here,” Crowley said, wrapping his arms around Aziraphale’s soft chest and sliding into his lap with a triumphant smile. 

“Oh.” 

“Oh,” Crowley parroted, delivering a little kiss to the spot just behind Aziraphale’s ear. 

Aziraphale shivered, so Crowley did it again and got a little squeak out of Aziraphale for his efforts. 

“You’re distracting me,” Aziraphale said with an exaggerated pout. 

“Yup.” Crowley nuzzled the spot he’d kissed and tightened his grip on Aziraphale’s body. 

“Are you planning to stop?” 

“Why would I?” 

“I was asking about something  _ important _ — oh, you’re insufferab— did you just  _ lick  _ me?” 

“...Maybe.” 

“Really, Crowley,” Aziraphale said with a sniff that sounded like an attempt to cover up a giggle. “Focus, please.” 

Crowley sighed and left Aziraphale’s ear alone, nestling down against the softness of Aziraphale’s belly, his head pressed into Aziraphale’s shoulder. Aziraphale hummed happily and dropped a kiss onto Crowley’s forehead. His arms came up to cradle Crowley’s wiry body, hauling it closer to his round one. Crowley let himself be moved, settling his head against Aziraphale’s heart and listening to its steady beat. 

“Focusing,” said Crowley after a moment. Aziraphale was steady against him, studying his face like it was a line of poetry. Like Crowley was something beautiful. 

“You haven’t been sleeping, but I know you must be tired.” 

“Mm. Not really  _ tired,  _ exactly.” 

“You can be tired in the same way that I can be hungry, Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice was flirting with the edge of petulance. “At my best count, you’ve nearly nodded off on some piece of furniture in this shop five times in the past two days.” 

Crowley was quickly discovering the tricky part of having someone who knows you almost as well as you know yourself: there’s nowhere to hide. There aren’t shadows when someone is an all-encompassing light. 

So Crowley made a noncommittal grunting noise and shifted his gaze away from Aziraphale’s. Being known was a much scarier thing than it had been in his dreams and memories. 

When Aziraphale spoke again, it sounded like his hands felt. Gentle, soft, forceful. 

“Please, my darling. Why won’t you rest?” 

“I have nightmares,” Crowley said, which was part of the truth. “Bad ones.” 

Crowley could practically hear the creases ripple across Aziraphale’s brow. “What— why should that matter? It hasn’t stopped you before, has it?” 

“Better if I drink a lot first, sometimes.” Crowley turned his head again, eyes sliding shut as he shoved his nose into Aziraphale’s jumper and took a shaky breath. “Otherwise, uh. I wake up, and it’s not always pretty.” 

One of those wonderful hands slipped away from Crowley’s back and arranged itself against his sharp cheek. 

“Tell me,” Aziraphale said, and tension that Crowley had failed to notice flooded out of his body. 

“Are you— you’re sure you wanna hear this?” 

“I am  _ certain _ .” 

Crowley’s hands tightened around Aziraphale’s broad chest. Anchoring him to something solid, taking up arms against the doubts that had begun to creep into Crowley’s mind. 

_ He won’t love you anymore,  _ the cruelest part of Crowley said inside his head, but Crowley pushed it back and said, “The bookshop. I know I’ll dream about it.” 

“What about the bookshop?” 

“It burned,” Crowley mumbled. “It fucking burned, Aziraphale. And I ran in to find you, and I shouted for you, but you were. You were gone.” 

“You—” Aziraphale was staring down at him, breathing in short gasps. “You ran into a burning building?”

“I ran into a burning building  _ again, _ ” Crowley said, squeezing his eyes shut more tightly to shield himself from the things he’d seen. They were still there anyway: two different buildings in two different times in two completely different sides of the world, and they were both burning with Aziraphale trapped inside. “I know I’ll dream about this one because I dream about the last one.” 

“The library.” 

“Yeah, the bloody library.” It featured in his dreams fairly regularly, and none of the dreams ended as well as the reality had. Crowley had awoken countless times with his legs tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, the smell of burning paper filling his nose and the sight of Aziraphale’s lifeless body burned into his eyelids. 

Some things, Crowley had come to realize, follow you forever. 

“I’m so sorry, Crowley.”

“Don’t be,” Crowley said quickly, pressing a kiss to the space in the middle of Aziraphale’s rounded chest. “Not your fault.” 

“Still.” 

“Mm.” 

“So, you know that you’ll have nightmares about the fire in the bookshop because you already have them about the fire in the library?” 

“Yeah.” Crowley wasn’t sure how much Aziraphale was prepared to hear, but once he’d started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. “They’ll be, uh. They’ll be worse now, though, because this fire was worse than that one.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I didn’t find you this time,” Crowley said. It tasted like a whimper. “I didn’t,  _ couldn’t,  _ save you this time. I found you in the library fire, but I lost you in this one.” 

“You didn’t lose me, Crowley.” Strong-voiced, clear-toned. Entirely certain. 

“No?” 

“No. I’m right here. I’m with you.” 

“With me.” 

“Always,” Aziraphale said, still so certain, and it cut clean through Crowley’s ribs and sliced a chunk out of his heart. 

They’d both said that, once.  _ I’ll love you always. I’ll be here always. I’ll always hold you when you need me. Always.  _ But all of those promises had broken in the Fall. They’d landed in fragments and shards around the Fallen StarMaker, and he’d carried them with him ever since. Let them cut into his hands, let them make him bleed, for six thousand years. 

Crowley stifled his torn-up sob in a choking cough. On his back, Aziraphale’s hand rubbed a gentle circle, pressing warmth into Crowley’s skin. 

They were silent for a few long moments. Crowley counted the automatic motions of Aziraphale’s body, lining up heartbeats against breaths. Easy numbers, simple reminders that Aziraphale was here and alive, that he hadn’t run from Crowley’s darkness. It was a symphony of beats and breaths, a dull-sounding refrain that told Crowley that this Aziraphale,  _ his  _ Aziraphale once more, loved him now. 

“You never told me that you came into the shop to find me,” Aziraphale murmured after a few measures of this strange music, his fingers combing messy lines through Crowley’s hair. “You never said.” 

“Didn’t want to cause you any more pain, angel.” 

“Crowley.” It was almost a chastisement, but it also wasn’t. “If you are hurting, I want to know about it.” 

_ He doesn’t,  _ that cruel piece of Crowley’s head said with a barbed-wire laugh. 

“Do you?” Not quite a doubt. A confirmation. 

“Yes. And before you ask: I am sure.” 

Crowley laughed at that, a fragile too-high thing. “You’re sure.” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more certain of anything in my life, really. Save for loving you.” 

“Ngh,” Crowley said, and it was Aziraphale’s turn to laugh.

“I do love you, you know.” 

“I know.” 

“And you love me.”

“More ‘n anything, angel.” 

“My darling,” said Aziraphale, and then he slipped his arms beneath Crowley’s and pulled him into a sitting position. 

For a moment, Aziraphale did nothing but stare at Crowley, a tiny smile floating on his lips. And then slowly, tenderly, he braced his hand against Crowley’s jaw and kissed him. 

“I have, um, more things,” Crowley said against Aziraphale’s mouth when they broke apart, head still fuzzy from the feeling of those pretty lips on his. “More nightmare things.” 

“How many more?” 

Crowley shrugged and kissed Aziraphale again because he couldn’t stop himself. “Dunno. Too many. Never counted ‘em.” 

“Oh, my dearest love.” 

“I just. I thought you should know that it won’t always be fires.” 

Aziraphale made a considering noise. “Will you tell me about them? The other things, I mean. Will you tell me when you dream about them?” 

“C—can try to.” 

“That’s all I could hope to ask.” 

“Oh.” 

“I love you, you see. I love you like this. You should— you should always have been loved like this, and I’m so terribly sorry that there was ever a time when you weren’t.” 

“ _ Oh _ .” 

“I’m going to make it up to you,” Aziraphale said, the tip of his nose just touching Crowley’s. “I’m going to make up for all of the times when I didn’t love you like I should have, all the times when I didn’t love you as you deserved to be loved.” 

“Aziraphale.” 

“Let me, Crowley. Let me love you like this.” 

Crowley’s eyes were fully golden. “Angel.” 

“Please.” 

Crowley kissed him again. Shoved his slim bodyweight forward, crushed Aziraphale against the sofa. Kissed him hard at first, softened it with a smile when Aziraphale made an adorably startled sound that sent chills down Crowley’s spine. Crowley kissed Aziraphale until his lungs were burning, and then he reminded himself that breathing wasn’t a thing that either of them  _ needed  _ to do and kept right on kissing him. 

The kisses meant  _ Yes. Okay. Fine. _ They meant _ Love me like this, please love me like this,  _ and Crowley knew without asking that Aziraphale understood. 

Eventually, Aziraphale pushed lightly at Crowley’s shoulders, and Crowley pulled away with a satisfied hum. 

“I’ve had a thought.” 

Crowley frowned at him. “If you’re thinking while I’m kissing you, I need to make some changes to my technique.” 

Aziraphale’s laugh filled the room, and Crowley kissed him right in the middle of it. 

“Sorry.” 

“I  _ am  _ trying to say something, you know.” 

“You’re just too pretty,” Crowley said, teasing even though he meant it. 

“Hush.” Aziraphale pressed a well-manicured finger to Crowley’s lips, but Crowley saw the smile that he was trying to keep from taking over his face. “It occurred to me to ask if it might help if I held you while you slept.” 

“Uh,” Crowley said eloquently. 

“If it’s a terrible idea, all you have to do is say. I just thought that it might—” 

“It’s, mm. Good. Good idea.” 

The force of Aziraphale’s grin nearly knocked Crowley backwards off the sofa (technically, Crowley was seated less on the sofa and more on Aziraphale’s thighs, but the sentiment is the same). 

“It is?” 

“Uh-huh.” Aziraphale was still beaming. Crowley never wanted him to stop. 

“Well then. You’ll have to stand up, dear, if we’re to go to bed.” 

“W— you want to do this  _ now _ ?” 

“You haven’t slept in at least five weeks, Crowley. I’m taking you to bed.” 

If they had been different people, that phrase could have meant something entirely else. Fortunately, neither Crowley nor Aziraphale were interested in any interpretation of any phase that involved one person’s bits interacting with the other’s, so Crowley could be certain that Aziraphale was using those words only in their strictest interpretation. 

Still, it wouldn’t hurt anyone to have Aziraphale on about it a bit. 

“Oooh, are you?” Crowley asked, throwing in an eyebrow wiggle that went a few miles off the track of Suggestive and landed in Ridiculous. 

“You,” Aziraphale said, scooping Crowley into his arms as he stood because Crowley had taken too long to get to his feet, “are a dreadful terror, my dear.” 

Crowley chuckled into the side of Aziraphale’s neck and allowed himself to be carried upstairs. When Aziraphale set him on the bed, he changed into his black silk pyjamas with a snap of his fingers and sat back to watch Aziraphale peel off his top three layers of clothing. 

Aziraphale caught him looking and raised an eyebrow. 

“You wear too many fucking layers,” Crowley explained with a cheeky grin. A pale blue button-down flew through the air and landed on his head, buttons catching in his hair. 

“Must you always torment me about my clothes? They’re  _ comfortable,  _ Crowley, and they’ll never go out of fashion.” 

“You don’t know the meaning of the word, angel,” Crowley said, raising his hands in anticipation of another assault of fabric. It didn’t come, so Crowley folded Aziraphale’s shirt sloppily and tossed it onto the bedside table. “If you think you’re getting this back, you’re mad.” 

“You’ll give it back.” Aziraphale tugged back the covers on the other side of the bed, dressed only in a pair of tragically tartan-patterned boxers and a white undershirt that hugged his belly in a way that Crowley thought should be painted and hung on a wall in the Louvre. 

“Won’t,” Crowley protested, snuggling down next to Aziraphale. 

“I’ll simply have to steal it back from you, then.” 

“Good luck with that. Never taking it off.”

Strong arms wrapped around Crowley’s torso, pulling him backwards until his back was curved against Aziraphale’s front. 

“You’ll have to take it off someday,” Aziraphale murmured, kissing Crowley’s shoulder. 

“Nah.” 

“You will,” Aziraphale said, and when he laid a line of kisses from the top of Crowley’s arm to the center of his back, Crowley forgot to argue. 

The night was blue-black and cool, and Crowley liked being awake in it. The darkness had always been comfortable; he’d worked in it, once, pulling together balls of light and placing them into the endless blackness of space. The stars weren’t visible — even if the roof hadn’t been there, London filled the sky with light pollution even on the nights that there were no clouds — but Crowley knew that they were there. Still burning, still spinning. Still doing what he’d created them to do. 

Crowley had been on earth for a little more than six thousand years, and he’d never stopped missing the stars. He didn’t think he ever would. But it had gotten easier as time had gone on, and they’d taken on different meanings across the ages. He wasn’t angry at them anymore, and he’d stopped being angry at himself for making them. Now, the stars were just the things that his hands had made back before he was Crowley, back when he wore white and had golden freckles and a name that no one remembered. But StarMaker was gone, and Crowley had taken his place, and Crowley had seen something that StarMaker had never been able to. Crowley had seen the stars as they were meant to be seen. He’d looked up at them from the surface of a tiny mudball in the middle of a solar system in the middle of a galaxy in the middle of an ever-growing universe. 

When it was put like that, the Earth seemed insignificant. Why this planet? Why this place? 

Crowley knew the answer. The Almighty had told StarMaker that he could hang the stars wherever he wanted except for a small stretch of space around a perfectly ordinary star. 

_ “Why not there?”  _ Even back then, Crowley had been asking questions. 

_ “Because I will set things in motion, my child, and someday there will be a place around that star that will be very important.”  _

_ “What place?”  _

The Almighty had laughed and brushed a lock of hair out of StarMaker’s eyes.  _ “A place that I love. The place and everything in it will be made from the stars you have formed, and I will love it.”  _

_ “What will it look like?”  _

_ “You will see it,”  _ the Almighty had said.  _ “And you, too, will love it.”  _

Crowley realized that the Almighty had, in spite of all of the mistakes Heaven had made from the Fall going forward, been exactly right about that. There was a lot here to love. 

Sleep was just beginning to creep around the edges of Crowley’s consciousness when Aziraphale shifted his shoulder forward and broke the silence. 

“I’ve been in love with you since 1941.” Aziraphale’s voice was smooth and dripping with sincerity, and Crowley could feel it rumbling through his chest when he spoke. “Well, I should say that I  _ realized  _ that I’m in love with you in 1941. I know it’s been true for far longer than that.” 

“194— oh.  _ Oh,  _ the fucking books.” 

A huffy-sounding sigh ruffled Crowley’s hair, and Crowley buried a snort of laughter in the stupid lacy pillowcase under his head. 

“It wasn’t the books.” 

“You bloody liar.” 

“It _wasn’t!_” Crowley craned his neck, eyebrow raised, and Aziraphale sighed again. “Well. It wasn’t _only _the books.” 

“If I’d’ve known that all I needed to do was save some stupid books to get you to fall in love with me, angel, I’d have done it back in Alexandria.” 

Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to say, “What?” 

“Uh.”  _ Fuck.  _

“Alexandria? You— you were in love with me in Alexandria?” 

Aziraphale looked suspiciously close to tears. His eyes were getting all watery and soft, so Crowley shoved his head a little further into the pillow and said, “Longer than that.” 

“Longer?” The smoothness was gone, replaced by a breathlessness that made Crowley’s head spin. The skin at the base of Crowley’s neck was warmed by Aziraphale’s breathing, a hot spot that centered him. 

“Yeah.” 

“How much longer?” Fucking Someone, Aziraphale’s voice was barely there anymore. Crowley wanted to kiss him, shut him up and make him think about something else, make him stop asking questions that Crowley didn’t know how to say the answer to. 

_ Since Heaven, since the day I met you, since the day I caught you watching me make the stars. I’ve never not loved you. I’ve been in love with you for so long that I don’t remember what it feels like not to be,  _ Crowley thought.  _ But you don’t remember that I loved you then. You don’t even remember knowing me.  _

It was too much all at once. Crowley didn’t want to lie — he refused to lie — but he couldn’t make himself talk about this. Not yet, not when things were so new. Not when Aziraphale was finally loving him again. 

So Crowley swore to himself that he’d tell Aziraphale the whole truth someday. Under the stars, maybe, or in the grey moments before dawn. Sometime that was suited for secrets. 

Crowley rolled over in Aziraphale’s arms. Aziraphale’s beautiful eyes were still misty, and they were darting around Crowley’s face in a mad rush, never resting anywhere. Looking for answers that Crowley didn’t yet want him to find. 

With a leaden tongue, Crowley swallowed hard and said, “Long as I’ve known you. That’s how much— that’s how long.” It wasn’t a lie, and for now, it was as good as Crowley could do. 

“No,” Aziraphale whispered. Not protesting, but disbelieving. 

“You were just… so, hnmg. So beautiful. You  _ are  _ so beautiful.” 

Aziraphale laughed, short and clear. “I’d just given my sword away, dear. I looked a wreck.” 

“Saw you before that.” 

“You what?” Aziraphale was staring at him, eyes so wide that Crowley wondered if he’d done a miracle to alter the size of his eye sockets. 

_ Long before that,  _ Crowley thought but couldn’t say. 

“I was, er. I saw you come down, watched you give your sword away.”

“You  _ saw  _ that?” 

“Mm.” 

“And you fell in love with me.” 

“Mm-hmm.” 

“You,” Aziraphale said, and he really was crying now even though he was grinning, “are the most incomprehensibly ridiculous creature.” 

“And  _ you  _ are the most beautiful one.” 

“Charmer,” Aziraphale said again, and pulled Crowley in for a kiss. 

Crowley fell asleep in Aziraphale’s arms, and when he woke up at four in the morning with a scream between his teeth and sweat shining on his forehead, Aziraphale was there. Steady hands wiped the tears from Crowley’s cheeks and the sweat from his skin with a silk handkerchief, and warm lips landed on Crowley’s fear-frozen ones, and a soft voice said gentle things into Crowley’s ear. 

“Lost you,” Crowley cried. “Lost you.” 

“Shh, no. See? I’m here.” 

“Lost you again.” Even with Aziraphale’s body warming the air, Crowley was shivering. 

“My love, it doesn’t matter if you lose me again every time you close your eyes, because  _ I will find you again  _ every time you open them.” 

Crowley’s sobs evened out into broken whimpers, and when he opened his eyes, Aziraphale was looking down at him. 

“There you are,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley loved him. 

“Hi.” 

“Hello, darling.” 

“Bit ‘f a mess. S’rry.” 

“Don’t be.” Aziraphale’s grip on Crowley loosened slightly, but Crowley didn’t move away. “You’re alright now, Crowley. It’s alright.” 

And for the first time since Crowley had begun having nightmares, it was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note to say that y'all's comments make my days so much brighter. I cherish every single one, and I go back and read through them on my worst days. Thank you for the love - I can only hope to be deserving of it.


	15. The South Downs, 2020 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley buys Aziraphale a cottage, and the truth about a great many things is finally revealed. 
> 
> Or: the chapter where Crowley starts to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! 
> 
> I haven't gone through and done really diligent editing on this yet, so there might be a few phrasing changes in coming days as I look it over, but I wanted to get it to you as soon as possible! It's another long one, and a lot happens here, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. 
> 
> This is the final real chapter of this fic. The final chapter will be a fluffy epilogue, set a few months and years out from this one. It'll essentially be a bunch of domestic bliss and some kisses and cuddles and a really weird star-related idea I had. It should (God willing) be up in the next few days!
> 
> If you've been with me on this crazy ride since the beginning: thank you. I know it's taken a while, and I know it's been a bit rough and very sad, but I hope I've delivered a happy ending. The next chapter should help wrap that up, I think. And if you're somewhat new to this story, or if you're reading it months or years after its completion or something: thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate you so much, and it means the world to know that you made the time. I hope it's been worth it. 
> 
> As always, each and every one of you have my eternal love and devotion. Seeing that y'all chose to read this and that y'all have found something here that you like is indescribably amazing. Thank you for all you do to encourage me to keep writing. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: language, mentions of prior character death, and mushy lovey stuff. All ace and tender, of course, because I'm me.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Crowley said, giving Aziraphale’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Maybe this was too much too soon. We could always go — y’know what, yeah. Let’s go. We should talk about this more back at hom— in London, we should talk more in London.” 

Aziraphale still didn’t appear to have taken a breath. He was standing perfectly still, staring with too-wide blue eyes at the little yellow cottage that sat in front of them. Crowley fidgeted some more and pressed his fingers even tighter into the soft skin beneath them. 

“Aziraphale,” said Crowley after another moment. This was getting worrying. 

When Aziraphale answered, it was so soft that Crowley nearly missed it. 

“You bought this.” 

“Er.” Crowley scratched the back of his neck (well, he scratched the hair there - he’d been growing it out in the five months since Armageddon). “Yes.” 

“For me.” 

“Yes.” 

“You bought me a  _ cottage _ .” 

“Yes,” Crowley said, sounding very much like a broken record and feeling quite as dizzy as one. He wasn’t doing a spectacular job of breathing, either. He was waiting to hear what Aziraphale was thinking. 

“Why?” 

Crowley’s face flushed a vibrant shade of red. “Nothing. You don’t like it, it’s fine. I should’ve asked. Let’s just go back to London, okay?” 

“I never said I didn’t like it,” Aziraphale murmured, and for the first time since Crowley had pointed to the cottage and said  _ “I bought you this. Place to get away, if we want a fresh start. Happy New Year and all that,”  _ he turned to face Crowley. There were tears shining in the corners of his eyes, and Crowley felt like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. 

“You, er. You do like it, then?” 

“Very, very much.” 

“Oh,” said Crowley, and he found that he was unable to stop a grin from taking over his face. “Good.” 

“This is  _ ours _ ,” Aziraphale said with a giggle, and he looked so beautifully and ecstatically happy that Crowley couldn’t help but kiss him. 

The kissing went on for quite some time, but Crowley didn’t have any mind to stop it. Aziraphale’s kisses felt like  _ I love you  _ and tasted like the sugared tea and chocolate biscuits that Crowley had packed for the ride, and Crowley was so impossibly infatuated with every aspect of every kiss that he quite forgot about everything else. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said after they’d finally pulled back. He toyed with the hair under his fingers, making Crowley shiver as he tucked a misplaced lock behind Crowley’s ear. 

“Welcome.” 

“Do you have a key?” 

Crowley stuck a hand in his front pocket and fished out a red-tagged key. He tugged Aziraphale up the driveway without another word, cheeks warming when he noticed that Aziraphale’s eyes had become filled with dots of light once more. 

“Fair warning, there’re some things that need fixing and painting and whatnot,” Crowley said, stopping in front of the door with the key in his open palm as he held it out to Aziraphale. “But I’m going to take care of all that, I swear.” 

“Crowley, I don’t care if this place has a hole in the roof.” Aziraphale plucked the key from Crowley’s hand and slipped it into the lock, his smile widening even further when he heard it click. 

“No holes anywhere. Least not last I checked.”

“You are the loveliest thing,” Aziraphale said softly, freeing his other hand from Crowley’s grip and resting it along the firm line of Crowley’s jaw. Adoration was written over every inch of Aziraphale’s face. His lips were soft because of it, round cheeks brushed pink with it. 

Crowley looked down at his shoes, but he couldn’t escape Aziraphale’s blessedly beautiful love even there. Brown shoes touched the front of his own snakeskin boots, tilted forward slightly because Aziraphale had pushed himself up onto his toes to get a little bit closer to Crowley. It was a strangely dizzying thing, and it shook Crowley to his core. Even after months of kisses and cuddles, of Aziraphale holding him through the night and soothing him when he woke in a panic from his nightmares, of  _ “I love you” _ and  _ “darling” _ and  _ “dearest” _ and  _ “my only” _ and  _ “my love”,  _ Crowley still hadn’t gotten used to this. He hadn’t adjusted to having his arms full of angel again. The sight of outdated shoes bumping up against his boots and the feeling of Aziraphale’s soft round belly pushing against his hips were just a few more things that Crowley had forgotten to think were ordinary. 

“Not as lovely as you,” Crowley finally managed to say to his toes, and Aziraphale’s musical laugh filled the air. 

“Shall we go inside, my dear?” 

“Mm-hmm.” 

Aziraphale pushed the door open and gasped. He froze in the doorway, and when Crowley laid a hand on his broad shoulder, Crowley could feel that he was shaking. 

It wasn’t all that much to look at, and Crowley knew that, so he wasn’t entirely sure why Aziraphale was staring at it like it was Trinity College Library. 

“Angel?” 

“It’s… Crowley, it’s perfect.” 

Crowley leaned over, wrapping his arms around Aziraphale’s waist as he buried his grin in the soft skin of Aziraphale’s neck. “Yeah?” 

“It’s  _ perfect. _ ” Aziraphale finally took a step inside, taking Crowley’s hand again and tugging him along for the ride. 

“We can bring our stuff here,” Crowley said, gesturing at the empty sitting room. “Sofa from your backroom, maybe. Chairs and, er, whatever those cushy stools you put your feet on are called.”

“Ottomans,” Aziraphale muttered faintly. 

“Ottomans, yeah. The fireplace is one of the reasons I liked this one — I thought it’d be nice to sit around some night. Watch a movie.”  _ Cuddle. Kiss you. _ “And I’ve got bits to bring too, but we can put those wherever. Shelves and CDs and records and things, y’know.” 

“Yes.” Aziraphale still sounded like he was a few moments away from collapsing, so Crowley disentangled their fingers once more and stretched his arm around Aziraphale’s back and fastened his hand to the swell of his hip. 

They moved from room to room slowly, Crowley’s angles pressing lines into Aziraphale’s curves. Aziraphale’s gaze shifted from wall to window to floor, and he eventually fell into a running commentary of everything he liked about the place. His sentences were punctuated with chirping laughter and full-body wiggles, and Crowley fell even more in love with him. 

Crowley pushed open a door at the back of the cottage, gesturing for Aziraphale to go inside first. 

“What is this?” 

A shrug. “It’s sort of a nothing room. No specific purpose, but I’d thought it could be, uh. A library.” 

Aziraphale moved so quickly that Crowley didn’t even have time to remove his hands from where they were jammed into his back pockets. He very suddenly found that he  _ couldn’t  _ move them, an inconvenient fact that was due to the way Aziraphale was pressing him against the closed door with his entire body weight. Fortunately, the problem of Crowley’s stuck hands was nearly irrelevant in light of the fact that Aziraphale was kissing Crowley so soundly that Crowley thought he might never stop. 

“I  _ love  _ you,” Aziraphale said when they broke apart. He was breathless, and his lips were red from the way they’d been nearly fused to Crowley’s. Inside of his skinny chest, Crowley’s heart flopped sideways at the sight of them. “I love you, I love you.” 

“I love you, too.” 

“I’m  _ in love  _ with you.” Aziraphale said it like a declaration, a clarification, and Crowley’s knees turned to jelly. 

Crowley knew that Aziraphale was in love with him. Aziraphale told him nearly every day — it was just a thing he did, easy as anything. Crowley would bring him a cup of tea, and Aziraphale would say something in thanks and cap it off with an  _ “I’m in love with you,”  _ and Crowley would have to sit down and compose himself. It felt exactly, perfectly, impossibly right to hear those words in Aziraphale’s gentle voice, but it was another thing that Crowley wasn’t quite used to yet. 

“I’m,” Crowley said, words catching in his throat. They did that sometimes, still, even though he’d had months of freedom. It was hard to undo six thousand years of not saying something. 

“I know.” 

“I’m,” Crowley tried again, finally managing to get his hands free and settling them on Aziraphale’s hips again. “I’m in love with you, too. Always been. Always.” 

“I know,” Aziraphale said softly. “My darling, my dearest, my most beautiful love.” 

When Aziraphale kissed Crowley this time, it wasn’t strong or desperate. It didn’t feel like the last one had, like it was something that had an expiration date. It was slow and deep and heart-bruisingly tender, and it tasted like forever. 

*********

Since the Apocalypse didn’t happen, Crowley and Aziraphale had taken more to the human way of doing things. They’d always done it in bits and pieces, but there was something new about it now. Miracles were much more appealing when you didn’t have to do them, and it was strangely comforting to have to call a restaurant and make a reservation or learn how to rewind a VHS tape. 

That didn’t mean that they did everything the human way, of course. Crowley refused to buy petrol for the Bentley (“It’s terrible for the environment, angel. The humans are doing a good enough job of fucking up the air on their own, they don’t need our help”), and Aziraphale couldn’t fathom the idea of letting any dust actually settle on his books. Neither of them had the slightest inclination towards getting a real job, either, and so a good many things continued to happen simply because Crowley and Aziraphale needed them to. 

Moving to the cottage was, to Crowley’s annoyance, something that Aziraphale had insisted be done at least partly by human methods. Aziraphale had wanted to take a close look at everything in the shop and decide whether to leave it behind in London. They’d both agreed that a few trips back to the city every year was a non-negotiable thing — the city was home to them both and had been such for quite some time, and neither could get entirely comfortable with the thought of leaving it behind for good. Consequently, Crowley had spent a very long and very sweaty four days helping Aziraphale sort through the piles of books, paper, and angel-motif knickknacks that were stacked against every wall of the bookshop. They’d managed to pack everything that Aziraphale deemed most important into a few dozen cardboard boxes, which Crowley had dutifully labeled and stacked next to the sofa. Only then had Aziraphale permitted him to miracle them into the library of the cottage, where they would wait patiently until Crowley and Aziraphale got around to unpacking them. 

Crowley had been perfectly prepared to snap his fingers and send his plants, his bed, and his best bottles of alcohol to the cottage as well, but Aziraphale had stopped him. This was a big thing they were doing, and Aziraphale felt that Crowley should treat it as such. 

These things, Aziraphale had said, deserve to be thought about. And so Crowley had allowed himself to be talked into running a similar look-and-see procedure through his flat, which is why he was standing in the middle of a few stacks of CDs when Aziraphale came into the main room with a beaten-looking wooden box in his hands. 

“Angel, is everythin—” Crowley’s eyes slid down to the box, and his tongue turned to stone. 

“What is this?” 

“Uh,” said Crowley heavily. “Things.”

Aziraphale gave a short nod. “Right. Take with us, or leave here?” 

“Take,” Crowley said immediately, and Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. 

Crowley knew that Aziraphale wasn’t going to push him to talk about this. He might ask a few questions, but he wouldn’t force Crowley to say anything if Crowley had made up his mind not to. But Crowley also knew that Aziraphale was a worrier by nature, and Crowley had just let all of his emotions spill over his face. If he clammed up now, Aziraphale would worry about him, and Crowley didn’t want that. 

“Did you look inside?” Crowley asked, stepping out from between the CDs. 

“Yes, sorry. Thought it might’ve been clothes or something — you really do have  _ so  _ many.” 

“I do.” 

The box had lived in Crowley’s wall safe since the moment that he’d had the thing installed to protect the holy water Aziraphale had given him in 1967. Crowley had taken it out a week or so after the world didn’t end, looking through it like he’d done for millennia. Touching each thing, remembering who it was a reminder of. Holding that piece of pale blue ribbon for a few minutes longer than anything else, pressing it to his nose even though it had long since lost the scent of Anna’s hair. 

He hadn’t put it back in the safe after that. Instead, he’d set it in the back corner of his closet, tucked just out of sight. No one from Downstairs was going to drop in unannounced anymore. No one would rifle through his flat looking for his weaknesses and searching for things to use against him. So the box was moved closer, out into the semi-open, and Crowley had left it there. 

“Sorry for looking,” Aziraphale said softly, pushing the box into Crowley’s hands when Crowley came to a stop in front of him. “I should have known it was something personal — it looks like it is, now that I know.” 

“It’s okay.” Crowley was surprised to find that he meant it. “C’mon, I’ll show you.” 

Something close to shock flickered over Aziraphale’s face, but it was gone by the time Crowley had put the box down on the kitchen counter. 

With the ease that comes with muscle memory, Crowley flicked open the bronze latch on the box and lifted the lid. He always reached for things in the order that he’d known the people they represented, so he closed his hand around a piece of dark-stained stone first. 

“You asked me what this box is,” Crowley said, glancing over at Aziraphale as he turned the stone over in his hands.

“Yes, but you don’t have to tell me.” 

“I know. I think… I’m not sure that I want to tell you, exactly, but I know that I should. You should know. I, uh. Trust you.” 

Aziraphale pressed a kiss to the side of Crowley’s shoulder, the highest point he could reach without Crowley bending down. It was a non-verbal acceptance of what Crowley had said, a silent act of thanks and love that didn’t give Crowley a chance to get distracted by lovely words like  _ I love you  _ and change his mind about speaking. 

“It’s a box of things that remind me of people. The people I loved, y’see. As many as I could keep track of.” 

A sort of half-pained whimper found its way past Aziraphale’s lips. When Crowley turned to face him again, he was studying Crowley’s face with watery eyes. Crowley could almost see the beginnings of a thousand questions building up behind those pretty lips, so he forged ahead. 

“I started collecting things back in Sodom.” Crowley reached for one of Aziraphale’s hands, giving it a gentle squeeze before dropping the stone into it. “You saved me that night, but I lost someone. Multiple someones. Four people I loved.”

“Your family,” Aziraphale said so that Crowley didn’t have to. “I remember.” 

“Yeah.” Crowley braced his hands on the edge of the counter. “Look, I haven’t talked to anyone about them, ever. I just… I just lost them, and then I buried them, and that was that.” 

“I know.” 

“You what?” Crowley had twisted his head around to stare at Aziraphale. “How could you possibly—” 

“I saw you,” Aziraphale said. A confession in three syllables. “I followed you when you went back into the city. Watched you, asked myself how a demon could love people like that. And when you left, I set blessings over their graves.” 

“Wh—” Crowley’s mind was spinning. “Why?” 

“You cared for them. You  _ loved  _ them, and I’d been told that demons couldn’t love. And you couldn’t protect their graves, couldn’t keep their bodies safe, so I did.” 

“I love you.” 

“Oh.” The word was the beginning of a startled laugh. “I thought you might be angry.” 

“I love you,” Crowley said again because he couldn’t think of anything better to say. 

“And I you, you wonderful impossible creature. But this isn’t my story to tell, my dear. Sorry for the interruption.”

“Good interruption,” Crowley said, and he swallowed the dryness in his throat. “But yeah. Story, family, stone.” 

“Mm.” 

“Like I said, there were four of them. I met Amos first — he owned the bar that I liked to get drunk at, and he was always sort of strangely protective of me. Like, he let me sleep there if I passed out, and he was always getting on me about my drinking.” 

“I like him.” 

“You would have, yeah.” Crowley took a steadying breath, and his mind filled with the sound of Amos’ deep laugh. “He was a big bloke. Tall, broad-shoulders, shaped a bit like you. Nice and soft. Good hugger, too — too tight sometimes, I remember that — and he laughed a lot. Smiled even more. Dark eyes, beard, excellent sense of humor.” 

“He sounds lovely.” 

“He was. He’s probably… not probably,  _ definitely  _ the closest thing I ever had to a father. Amos was a really good man, and he didn’t like to see people hurting, so he and his wife practically adopted me. They had two little girls already, but they just sorta took me in without a second thought.” 

Aziraphale was rubbing his thumb across the stone in wide sweeping motions, eyes still trained on Crowley’s face. He was waiting for Crowley to go on, so Crowley did. 

“The girls. They used to plait my hair. Stuck flowers in it, once, and Amos laughed at me for a good hour.” 

“What were their names?” 

“Bracha was the older one, Dalia was the younger. Couple years apart.” Crowley sucked in another breath, trying to convince his body to stop shaking. “Bracha was wicked smart. Took after her mom in that. And Dalia was the sweetest kid, Aziraphale. Hugger, like her dad. She spent nearly a whole day on my back once, just telling me stories that made no sense and making me laugh.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said softly. “Oh, Crowley, I’m so sorry that I couldn’t save them for you.” 

“It’s, ah. ‘S fine.” It wasn’t, but it also didn’t hurt as badly as Crowley had thought that it would. He hadn’t said these names out loud in more than three thousand years, but they felt familiar in his mouth. It was like they’d been there, tucked against the inside of his cheeks, waiting for Crowley to say them again. 

“Tell me more?” Not a demand. A request. Crowley fulfilled it. 

“The girls called me  _ אח _ — ‘brother.’ I didn’t ever ask them to, they just.” Crowley shrugged. “They just did. And, and angel, I swear to Someone, they didn’t even ask why I started living with them one day. They never wanted to know. It’s like they knew that I was supposed to be there, I think. Knew that I needed them, and needed their parents. Someone to love who would love me back.” 

“Yes.” Crowley had expected Aziraphale to look hurt at that, but he didn’t. Aziraphale, by some impossible miracle, seemed to understand. 

“So, yeah. Amos, and Bracha, and Dalia. They were… they were good people. The best people. You’d have liked them. I know you would have.” 

“I would have, yes.” 

“And then there was, uh. Anah.” Crowley stopped there, his lungs refusing to push the necessary air up his windpipe. Anah had been the hardest to lose, and she was the one member of his family in Sodom who’d never left him alone for long. Crowley saw all of the people he’d loved in his dreams, and he always woke with an aching chest and the desire to have one more talk, one more hug, one more laugh with them. They all came around at one point or another. But Anah came often. She threaded her fingers through his short hair and scolded him for cutting it off. She reprimanded him for not telling Aziraphale how he felt, and even after he’d done that, she came to tell him off for still keeping secrets. And she smiled at him, and she hugged him, and she told him that she missed him. In his mind, Crowley always held her tight and told her that he had never, not once, stopped missing her. And when Crowley woke up, the ache was a little deeper, the desire for one more everything a little stronger, because Anah had been the reason he hadn’t given up on caring about the world. She was, when it came down to it, the root of why Crowley had given enough of a shit to bother with saving the Earth at all. 

Crowley was shaken out of his thoughts by another soft “Oh.” 

“Oh?” 

“Anah,” Aziraphale said slowly. “Anah. Anna.” 

Fuck, Aziraphale was smart. Crowley loved him. 

“Yeah,” said Crowley, and in spite of the fact that he was talking about the family he’d loved but failed to save, the corner of his mouth curled upwards in a smile. “Yeah.”

“You named Anna after her.” 

“I did. She was the one who wanted to take me in. She’s the one who treated me like a son first, before Amos did. She was… she was the best thing, Aziraphale. The very best thing.” 

“You must have loved her very much.” Aziraphale’s voice had not stopped being soft since the conversation began, but it had dipped into a level of tenderness that Crowley couldn’t be sure he’d ever heard before. 

“I did,” Crowley said, and it was suddenly so much easier to speak. “She was brilliant, angel. And she cared about everyone. And she asked so many questions, talking to me just to talk to me. She was such a mother hen about everything — did I comb my hair? How long had it been since I bathed? Was I ever going to get a proper job, and what did I do when I went out for hours anyway? Would I like her to set me up with a nice girl sometime, find someone to settle down with?” 

Aziraphale laughed. “How did you get around that one?” 

“Told her the truth.” Crowley looked Aziraphale in the eye, shot him a tiny smile. “I told her that I loved someone so much that I could never hope to love anyone else.” 

When Aziraphale said “Oh,” this time, it was with lips that had spread into a wide grin, his smile making crinkles in the skin around his eyes. 

“Anyway. Anah was a big part of the reason I am the way I am, I think. She helped me be better. Helped me remember that I could be.” 

“Then I am very,  _ very  _ thankful for her,” Aziraphale said, and then he set the fragment of stone on the counter next to the box and wrapped his arms around Crowley’s neck. 

Crowley sighed into the embrace. He buried his nose in Aziraphale’s hair, taking in the clean floral scent of him. His hands came to rest on Aziraphale’s waist, thumbs rubbing light circles into the rough fabric of the horribly patterned jumper that Aziraphale had been wearing for the better part of a week. In his head, Anah was dropping a kiss onto his forehead and saying something about it being about damn time for all this. Crowley smiled for her, because she’d always liked it when she could say something that would make him stop being quite so serious. 

Aziraphale shifted backwards after a few minutes. He picked up the stone again and handed it to Crowley, who tucked it safely back into the corner of the box. 

“You don’t have to tell me about all of them right now,” said Aziraphale, trailing his fingers over the objects in the box with a feather-light touch. Broken shackles, pieces of cloth. A brush still blackened with dried kohl, a military patch from the sleeve of a boy who hadn’t died at the Somme. A piece of ribbon, a wine cork. Little things, insignificant things. Things that held Crowley’s love for the world. 

“I’ll tell you about them.”

“I’d like that.” Aziraphale’s hand slipped into Crowley’s. “But it doesn’t have to be now. It can be any time you like. Whenever you’re ready.” 

“Okay.” 

“And you can talk about them, you know. Amos and Anah and Bracha and Dalia. I’m sure you see things that remind you of them sometimes. I’m sure you remember things. I know that I remember things about people I cared for throughout the years. So I just want you to know that you can talk about them, if you want to. I’d love to hear anything you’d like to tell me.” 

“Okay,” Crowley said again, and then he bent down and kissed Aziraphale. Aziraphale deserved to be kissed for that. He deserved to be kissed for  _ existing,  _ really, but Crowley liked having reasons for kisses sometimes. It gave him excuses to kiss Aziraphale more often, having reasons. 

Kisses were markers for Crowley. They were checks on lists and invisible tattoos on skin, little notations of perfect moments and right words and beauty for the sake of beauty. They were soft warm things that Crowley knew meant  _ These are the reasons I love you. These are the things I love about you.  _ Kisses were scribbled down notes on napkins that said  _ I love you here,  _ and  _ I love you for this,  _ and  _ I am in love with this part of you.  _

And the best thing about being able to kiss Aziraphale for a million reasons or no reason was that Crowley could use them as markers and checks and tattoos and notes whenever he wanted to, for as long as he wanted to. He could do it until he had said, with no room for misinterpretation:  _ These are the reasons I love you. The thing I love about you is everything. I love you everywhere. I love you for this and every other thing. I am in love with every part of you.  _

When Crowley had finished making the newest note, he pulled away and looked down. 

“You’re beautiful,” Crowley said, because Aziraphale was. He always had been. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale said, because he did. 

The box was put between two of Crowley’s plants, and when Crowley and Aziraphale had finished gathering the things that Crowley wanted to bring to the cottage, it was sent along with the rest. It landed in the sitting room, and it stayed there until Crowley moved it to the corner of a new closet. 

Someday soon, Crowley would pull the box from the closet. When he was ready, he would set it on the table in the kitchen of the cottage. He would open it with careful fingers and take something out, and he would hand the object to Aziraphale. With steady breaths and slow words, Crowley would talk about the person it had belonged to, and a little more of him would be free. And after the object was returned to its spot and the box had been shoved back into the closet, Crowley would kiss Aziraphale, and that newly freed part of him would be loved. 

*********

“Dear,” Aziraphale said, walking into the room with a sigh. “Please stop glaring at the door frame.” 

“Paint’s peeling.” 

“That’s alright.” 

“I’ll fix it,” Crowley said, pulling his pencil out from behind his ear and scratching a note down under a column labeled  _ To Paint.  _

He was keeping a list of things that needed mending around the cottage. The fact that there were things that needed fixing was, strangely, one of the reasons he’d picked this cottage instead of one of the others he’d looked at. There was something comforting about the knowledge that he could use his hands to make things better. He hadn’t built this place for Aziraphale himself, but he could make it beautiful for him. He could put plaster over the crack in the ceiling of the bedroom, and he could walk around with cans of paint in whichever colors Aziraphale liked best, and he could fix things. 

Crowley had always been good with his hands. He’d been created with that particular gift in extra measure, because he’d been created to make the stars. But after the Fall, Crowley hadn’t had much chance to make beautiful things. He’d tried to take up drawing at one point, but it hadn’t felt right. The charcoal had been too firm, too dry, and far too cool. It hadn’t been the same, and so Crowley had torn up the drawings he’d made and summoned a fire to consume them. Using human things to create something beautiful had felt hollow and pointless, and so he hadn’t done it again. 

Now, though, Crowley found that he was itching to do something. His fingers, restless since the day he’d been born, wanted to be wrapped around a brush or a hammer. They wanted to build something again, something good, because Aziraphale would get to see it. 

Long ago, StarMaker had made beautiful things for the whole universe. Now, Crowley was making them for his. 

There was another long sigh from over Crowley’s shoulder, and then a soft warm body was pressing into his back as beautiful arms wrapped themselves around his middle. 

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Aziraphale said against Crowley’s upper back. “This place is wonderful. You being in this place makes it wonderful.” 

“I want to do it.” Crowley stuck the pencil back behind his ear and slipped his notepad back into his pocket. He let his hands come to rest on top of Aziraphale’s. “Let me— let me do this for you, angel.” 

“Okay.” 

“Thank you.” 

Crowley turned around in Aziraphale’s arms, smiling at the sight of him. He was so damn pretty. 

“Hi,” Crowley said, and he leaned down to press a kiss to the tip of Aziraphale’s nose. 

Aziraphale’s laugh was low and gentle. “Hello, darling.” 

“How’s the baking coming?” There was flour on Aziraphale’s cheek and all over the front of his jumper. It was rubbing off onto Crowley’s shirt, white dust clinging to black fabric in uneven patches, but Crowley didn’t care. He’d throw all of his clothes into a bin of the stuff if it meant that Aziraphale would never stop wanting to hold him like this. 

“I’m making muffins.” 

“Oh?” 

“Blueberry ones.” 

“Ah.” Another kiss landed on Aziraphale’s face, this time on his forehead. “You like those.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, and he wiggled happily. “So do you, if I recall correctly.” 

“You do.” 

“That’s why I made them today, actually. Because  _ you  _ like them.” 

The tips of Crowley’s ears burned with a blush. “You don’t have to bake things for me.” 

“And  _ you  _ don’t have to fix things for  _ me _ , but here we both are.” 

“Ngh,” Crowley said, and when he leaned in to kiss Aziraphale again, his lips found their way to Aziraphale’s. 

When the oven timer buzzed, Aziraphale pressed a kiss to the underside of Crowley’s sharp jaw and bustled off to the kitchen, muttering something that might have been a prayer under his breath. Crowley followed him with a dopey smile stuck on his face, and when Aziraphale pulled a tin of misshapen muffins out of the oven, his smile widened. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, his mouth falling into a frown. The blush on his cheeks changed, the splotchy red flush of embarrassment overtaking the soft pink color that always followed Crowley’s kisses. 

That, Crowley decided immediately, was unacceptable. He crossed the room in a few steps, leaning one hip into the counter next to where Aziraphale was standing. 

“I don’t understand why they look like that.” Something that sounded horribly like disappointment was sending a rippling quiver through Aziraphale’s voice. 

“They look good.” 

Aziraphale made a huffing sound and turned his face away from Crowley. “That’s very kind of you to say, Crowley, but they really… they aren’t right.” 

Crowley grabbed a muffin out of the tin, paying no mind to the fact that it hadn’t cooled at all as he shoved it into his mouth. 

“What are you—  _ Crowley _ , they’re still hot!” 

“Dun’ matter,” Crowley said around a mouthful of muffin. He shot a vaguely threatening miracle in the direction of his taste buds, which suddenly forgot that they were burning and started to register flavor again. 

“You are  _ impossible, _ ” Aziraphale said, but he was smiling.

“Mm-huh.” Crowley swallowed hard and ran his tongue over his teeth. The muffin was a little too sweet and quite dry, but Crowley wanted to eat the remaining eleven anyway. “Good muffin, though.” 

“It wasn’t,” Aziraphale protested. “It couldn’t have been.” 

“Best muffin I’ve ever had in my fuckin’ life.” 

“Liar,” Aziraphale said, trying and failing to stifle a laugh. 

Raising an eyebrow, Crowley reached out to grab another. 

Aziraphale swatted his hand away with a giggle. “Stop it.” 

“I want another one!” 

“You don’t.” 

“I do. Gimme— Aziraphale, let me get— move your hand, angel.” 

“No,” Aziraphale said primly, moving to block Crowley from getting at them. His eyes were full of light again, though, so Crowley changed tack. 

“Shut up and try one, then,” Crowley said, and kissed him. 

When Crowley pulled away, the right colored blush was back on Aziraphale’s cheeks. 

“See?” Crowley kissed him again, a short touch of lips. “Good muffin.” 

“I love you,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley tugged Aziraphale closer, settling his chin on top of Aziraphale’s head. There were times when Aziraphale’s professions of love caught him off guard, and it always took too long for Crowley to unscramble his brain enough to say it back. It was a frustrating, crippling thing, and Crowley hated it. But he knew that Aziraphale was patient, that Aziraphale had never held this against him. Aziraphale understood that it took Crowley time to gather himself sometimes even if he didn’t know the reason why, and Crowley loved him for understanding. 

Softly, Crowley brushed one hand down the slope of Azirphale’s back. He did it once, twice, three times. Three motions for three words. He stopped and let his hand hang in the air for a moment, and then he did it again. Three intentional strokes. 

One.  _ I.  _

Two.  _ Love.  _

Three.  _ You.  _

Aziraphale made a happy squeaking sound, and then the wide fingers on Crowley’s hip lifted away. They came down in a gentle tap, and then repeated the movement twice more. 

“You know what I—” Crowley started, roughness creeping into his smooth voice. “You know.” 

“I know,” Aziraphale said, and he tapped Crowley’s hip again. Three quick pushes, all in a row.  _ I love you.  _

Crowley moved both hands this time, stroking in long sweeps from shoulder to waist. It was the biggest gesture he could think to do, the only thing close enough in magnitude to the words his tongue refused to let him say. 

They stayed like that for quite some time, wrapped in each other’s arms as they traded touches. They didn’t move until after the sun had set, until the stars that Crowley had once made were visible through the kitchen window. And when they did move, it was Aziraphale who did it first. 

“Come to bed, darling,” Aziraphale whispered, taking Crowley’s hand in his. 

Crowley fell asleep with his head pillowed on Aziraphale’s chest, one long finger tapping a triple beat onto the back of Aziraphale’s hand. 

*********

When Crowley finally told Aziraphale everything that he remembered about Heaven, it didn’t happen like he’d hoped. There was no exact right moment. It wasn’t done in whispers at the break of dawn. It didn’t follow a miraculous instant clarity that this was the time that Crowley was ready, because he didn’t know that he was ready until it happened. 

Crowley walked into the kitchen with his hands caked in dried white paint, speckles of the stuff scattered across his face and arms. He was nearly done fixing up the cottage, but he was starting to seriously consider finding more projects to do because Aziraphale’s delighted gasps (and the kisses that always followed) were worth experiencing as often as possible. 

“Hello, dear,” Aziraphale said without looking up. He seemed to be engaged in an arm wrestling match with a lumpy ball of dough, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. 

“Hi,” Crowley said, jumping up onto a stretch of counter space that was flour-free. “What’s it today?” 

“Scones.”

“What kind?” 

“Just the normal kind.” Aziraphale sounded disappointed, so Crowley scooted down into the flour and pressed a kiss into his fluffy white curls. 

“Bet I’ll like them.” 

A tiny smile slid over Aziraphale’s lips. “And I’m sure you’ll say you like them even if they’re terrible.” 

“I’ll like ‘em.” 

For the first time since Crowley had come in, Aziraphale took his eyes off of the dough and turned to look at Crowley. His blue eyes locked onto Crowley’s yellow ones, and he smiled. 

“Hello,” Aziraphale said again, and he leaned in to press a kiss to Crowley’s lips. 

“Said that already.” 

“I’ll say it again,” Aziraphale murmured against Crowley’s lips. “Hello, my love.” 

Crowley’s hands reached for Aziraphale’s waist and came to rest there in an instant, and he tugged Aziraphale closer, wrapping his long legs around the backs of Aziraphale’s thighs. Locking Aziraphale in, holding him there. 

“My love,” Aziraphale repeated, and Crowley shivered. 

“Love you.” 

“I love you, too,” Aziraphale said with a sweet smile, and he kissed Crowley again. 

When Crowley broke the kiss, Aziraphale was laughing. 

“What’re you on about?” 

“You’re covered in paint, dearest.” 

“ _ You’re  _ covered in bits of raw scone,” Crowley said tetchily. It was hard to not be at least mildly miffed about being mocked for your appearance by a man covered in flour and dough. 

“Oh, no no! I didn’t mean it like that. I think it looks… well, I think it looks lovely, really.” 

“Shut up,” said Crowley, but he started to smile anyway. 

“You look beautiful,” Aziraphale insisted, bumping Crowley’s nose with his own. “It’s quite fetching. It looks like you have stars on your skin.” 

Crowley’s blood froze in his veins. Before he could register what he was doing, he was pushing at Aziraphale’s chest and unwinding his legs from around Aziraphale’s body, shoving himself backwards and nearly falling off of the counter in his haste to get away. 

_ StarMaker had been sitting with Aziraphale, tracing idle spirals through the starstuff that hung in the air.  _

_ “You’re beautiful,” Aziraphale had said, taking StarMaker’s free hand in his. “So beautiful.”  _

_ “You’re more so.” StarMaker had dragged a finger through the glowing stardust, painting Aziraphale’s name with the negative space. “Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”  _

_ Even then, Aziraphale’s laugh had been musical and light, and StarMaker had turned to watch Aziraphale’s lovely soft body shake with it.  _

_ “Really, my darling. You’re the one who has stars on his skin.” Aziraphale had started to trail his fingers over StarMaker’s arm, pressing lightly at some of the golden freckles. He’d moved his hand up to StarMaker’s cheek, and StarMaker had let him brush lines across those stars as well, and StarMaker had loved him.  _

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s voice was sharp and clear, and it stopped Crowley in his tracks. Crowley had almost made it to the kitchen door, one white-painted hand stretched out towards the doorknob. 

Crowley dropped his hand back to his side, letting it hit his leg with a soft thump. He couldn’t quite bring himself to turn around because he knew that Aziraphale would have a soft, concerned, altogether too gentle frown marring his pretty face, and Crowley was the one who had put it there. Crowley and his inability to tell the truth, forever leaving dark stains on beautiful things. 

But Crowley didn’t want to destroy things anymore. He wanted the marks that he left on Aziraphale to be from kisses, not from lies, and so Crowley stopped thinking and started talking. 

“I have to, uh. Have to tell you something,” Crowley said over his shoulder. 

“Okay.” There was the sound of rustling cloth, and then the air twisted slightly in the way that it always did when Aziraphale did a miracle. Crowley stayed stock-still, not daring to look at Aziraphale quite yet, until Aziraphale’s warm hand slid into his. He allowed Aziraphale to lead him out of the kitchen and into their bedroom, and when Aziraphale guided him to the bed, he went willingly. 

“Sorry,” Crowley said instinctively, finally summoning the courage to meet Aziraphale’s eyes. There was some grey-blue sadness in them already, and Crowley’s heart clenched with the knowledge that he was going to do nothing but make that worse. 

“Please don’t apologize for this.” 

“I should.” 

“Don’t.” Aziraphale’s breathing was shaky as he settled himself under the covers, sitting against the headboard. Soft hands (clean and flourless, and so perfectly that way that it had to have been the result of the miracle in the kitchen) patted softer thighs, an open invitation for Crowley to put his head or his whole body there if he chose to. 

For a moment, Crowley hesitated. It felt wrong to allow Aziraphale to console him after what he’d done in the kitchen. He’d panicked, and he’d actually  _ pushed Aziraphale away from himself,  _ and he’d tried to run out of the room without so much as a word of explanation. 

Aziraphale was watching Crowley carefully now. He was studying Crowley’s face in the way he liked to do, heavy fingers twitching towards the place where Crowley’s hand was clinging white-knuckled to their abominable floral bedspread. He was trying not to move too fast, Crowley realized with a choked-off laugh. Aziraphale was trying not to go too fast for him. 

So Crowley released his grip on the comforter and shifted around, setting his head lightly onto Aziraphale’s thighs. Glancing upward with eyes that were all golden, Crowley gave Aziraphale a nod, and one of Aziraphale’s hands began stroking through Crowley’s hair. 

Crowley knew that he looked a mess. He was covered in paint, and Aziraphale’s fingers kept getting caught in the dried droplets of it that had found their way into his hair. He was shaking, too, his flimsy body quivering against Aziraphale’s solid one. And somewhere between the kitchen and here, slick black scales had poked their way through the skin on one of his shoulders and on the back side of his calf. 

“You said that you had something to tell me?”

_ No,  _ Crowley almost said.  _ No, I don’t. I’m sorry. Let’s forget this whole thing, please. Tell me about your scones. Let me make some tea for you. Let me show you what I painted for you today.  _

But Crowley gritted his teeth, grinding them against each other as he forced his two-tipped tongue to form the words. “It's about Heaven.”

Crowley felt Aziraphale stiffen, felt softness take on an edge, and he closed his eyes. He needed to do this. Aziraphale needed to know. This, this horrible crawling creeping darkness, was important. 

“Okay,” Aziraphale said, his voice calm and even. “But only if you want, dearest. Only if you want.”

_ I don't want,  _ Crowley felt like screaming.  _ I don't want. I don't want to have to need to, I'm sorry. _

But he set his jaw and made himself speak anyway. It wasn't about wanting. It was about letting Aziraphale love him, a thing that Aziraphale asked him to do a dozen times a day. 

“You’ve said that before,” Crowley said slowly. “The thing about my skin having stars.” 

Aziraphale’s forehead creased in confusion. “What?” 

“It was a long time ago, and my skin… my skin was different. I was different.” Crowley drew in a breath, hating his lungs for the way they had turned to mesh. “I used to look a lot like this, you know. But my freckles were gold, and my eyes were, uh. Not the way they are now. And you told me that I had stars on my skin. You told me a hundred times, because it made me smile.”

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, “what are you talking about?” 

“I told you once that we didn't know each other very well. Before the Fall, I mean. You asked me on the Ark if we knew each other in Heaven, and I said that we did, but that we didn’t know each other all that well.”

“Yes.” 

“I lied.”

Aziraphale was silent for a moment, his hands stilling in Crowley’s hair. Time passed in loops instead of lines until an “Oh,” closer to a breath than a word, fell from Aziraphale's lips. 

“We knew each other very well,” Crowley made himself say. “I told you something a few months back, remember? Told you I'd loved you for my whole life, do you — ” 

He was cut off by another “Oh,” this one even softer than the last. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, knowing that Aziraphale understood what he was saying. “Yeah, so. So. I loved you - not that I don't now, because I do, I've never stopped, I swear - but I loved you in Heaven, and. And you loved me.”

Aziraphale made a sound like a crushed-up whimper, but he didn't say anything. He was giving Crowley space to talk, time to say words that were slow in coming. 

“You used to love me, but when I Fell, you… you forgot.” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“Not your fault,” Crowley said quickly. “You didn’t want to, you’ve told me that. You just… you  _ did _ , that’s all it is. It’s just that you did.” 

“That I loved you, or that I forgot?” 

“Both. The second, mostly, but both.” 

There was a space of a few breaths, and Crowley felt Aziraphale’s solid strength begin to shake. And then Aziraphale said, “I wish I could remember. For your sake, my dear, I wish I could remember.” 

He broke off in a short joyless laugh, and Crowley’s heart crushed itself inwards. 

“It’s just occurred to me that I don’t even know how we met.” Aziraphale’s voice was still shaking with the remnants of that laugh, and Crowley wanted to kiss it off his lips. 

But that wasn’t what Aziraphale needed, and it wasn’t what Crowley needed, either. So Crowley mumbled a string of nothing-syllables as he pushed himself up and away from Aziraphale’s thighs in favor of curling into Aziraphale’s side. 

“I don’t know that we were really supposed to meet, actually. We were — you were a different rank than I was. Below me. I was, uh. Someone important. But you didn’t care, because you’ve never cared about things like that. You just… you smiled at me, and you watched me work, and. And you spoke to me, and you laughed, and that was it. I was gone on you then, and I’ve never not been since.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said softly, brushing his hands over Crowley’s arms in a gentle caress. “I suppose that’s really not all that different than the way  _ I  _ remember meeting you. I smiled at you in Eden, too, and I made you laugh.”

“I suppose it really isn’t too different, no.” In six thousand years, Crowley had never thought of that. 

“I do have a question, my dear, but I can save it for another time.” 

Crowley gave his permission in the form of a grunt and a nod. 

“Who were you?” Aziraphale’s eyes were trained on Crowley’s, silent tears sliding over his cheeks. 

“Gnuh.” Crowley made himself breathe, and then he let the words roll off of his tongue. “StarMaker. I was StarMaker.” 

“No,” Aziraphale gasped, more shocked than disbelieving. “You were—  _ Crowley,  _ you beautiful, wonderful,  _ brilliant  _ thing.” 

Crowley stared at him, unblinking. “What?” 

“Of course you were. Of course you made the stars, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his arms coming around Crowley, enclosing him in warmth. “I should have known. I should have  _ known.  _ Of course it was you. You’re the only one who could have made them, I think. The only one clever enough. The only one good enough.” 

“You used to say that, too,” Crowley said in a rush, cringing at Aziraphale’s responding sharp inhale. “It was one of those things you always said.  _ ‘You’re so clever, darling. You’re so good at this.’ _ I… I believed you, I think. I remember believing you.” 

There were a few beats of silence, and for a moment, Crowley felt Aziraphale’s solid strength falter. 

“Believe me again,” whispered Aziraphale. “Please, Crowley. Believe me again.” 

Something dark that tasted terribly like fear was slithering over Crowley’s tongue, and it pushed against his teeth. It was an honest thing, but Crowley wanted to lock it away forever and forget that he’d ever felt it. He didn’t want to feel it anymore, and he didn’t want to talk about it, but it was insistent. 

So Crowley squeezed Aziraphale a little tighter and pressed his body more closely into the home-shaped curves of Aziraphale’s side, and he gave the dark thing a voice. 

“I want to,” Crowley said softly. “I want to believe you when you say I’m clever and, and good. And I want to — fucking Someone, Aziraphale, I want to believe me when you tell me that you love me. And most of the time, I do. I do believe you, I really do, until I don’t. Because  there are, uh. There are roadblocks there, y’know? You loved me before, and something happened, and you forgot.” 

“Ah.” 

“I'm scared, angel.” The thing that had lived in Crowley's soul since the day he climbed the Eastern Gate of Eden was sitting in his lap now, dark and gooey and horrible, and Crowley was floating somewhere between relieved and disgusted. “I want to be okay, and I want to trust you and trust  _ this _ , but I'm afraid that it'll happen again. I’m bloody fucking terrified that you'll wake up one day and not love me anymore. That you won’t… you won’t even remember who I am.” 

“Crowley, my dearest heart,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley collapsed against his chest, “I love you. I  _ do _ , I  _ have.  _ I  _ will. _ ” 

“But you loved me then, and I'm not. I'm not who I was, I'm not him anymore. I can't... can't make stars for you, can't love you like I used to.” 

With a sigh, Aziraphale rested his chin on top of Crowley's head and moved his hands down to lock around Crowley's torso. Holding him close, making him safe, bringing him home. 

“I don't want you as you used to be, my dearest love. I want you as you are.”

“But I can't be wonderful again, do you know that? I can't. It's not, it's not who I am anymore.” 

The end of that thought wasn't spoken, but Crowley knew that Aziraphale heard it anyway.  _ If you could forget that you loved StarMaker, someone who should have been unforgettable, how can I know that you won't forget to love me?  _

“Anthony Crowley,” Aziraphale said firmly, “you are the most wonderful thing in the universe. And I'll love you until the stars you made aren't there anymore.” 

“Ngh.” Crowley's face was hot, and his ears were pink, but this was good. 

“I don't remember loving StarMaker,” Aziraphale said, and then he spun Crowley around to face him. There were tear tracks on his face, and Crowley reached up to wipe them off, but Aziraphale caught his hand. Grabbed his wrist, laced their fingers together. Leaned in and pressed his nose to Crowley's. “And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I don't remember loving you, and I'm sorry that you've loved me on your own for so long, that I left you alone for so long.”

“It's fine,” Crowley mumbled, thin and small. 

Aziraphale shook his head and moved a little closer, pressing a quick kiss to Crowley's lips. 

“It isn't, but that's not- it's not something that I can change, much as I'd like to.” Aziraphale kissed him again, slower, and covered Crowley's dark doubts with angelic light. “What matters is this: I have fallen in love with  _ you _ . I am in love with, and I love,  _ you _ . The you that's here, the you who was never much good at being a demon. That is who I love, and the way I see it, you are exactly who you should be.”

Crowley was crying now, too. When he opened his mouth to say something, maybe to ask Aziraphale to stop, maybe to ask him to keep going, Aziraphale stopped him with another kiss.

“You, Crowley, are the one I remember loving. You're the one I love. And if anyone tries to make me stop, if anyone asks me to forget, I will fight them. I will fight in every way I know how, do you understand me? I will fight for you, my only, because  _ I am on your side. _ ” 

Crowley pressed their foreheads together, wrenching his hand out from where it was interlocked with Aziraphale's so that he could rest his fingers on the sides of Aziraphale's face. 

There were so many words that he wanted to say, but they got jumbled in his head and tangled on his tongue, so he fell back on the one word that he'd been saying for a thousand years of lonely loving. 

“Angel,” Crowley said, and it sounded like  _ You're beautiful, and I love you.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note to those who have left comments in the last month: I see you, and I am profoundly grateful! I'm working on finishing the epilogue, but as soon as I'm done, I'll start catching up on comments! Thank you _so_ much for all you give me in the way of encouragement and love.


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few snapshots of domestic bliss. Includes the return to a garden, the re-making of stars, and discussions of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. 
> 
> I cannot believe that I have written FOUR novel-length fics for this fandom in a little less than ten months. When I say that Good Omens has taken over my life, y'all... 
> 
> Anyway. Thank you for bearing with me through all of this. There were some very high highs and very low lows, and I am so profoundly grateful to all of you for being here to see the happy ending. I hope that it's enough. 
> 
> I think there's a chance that I'll pop back in at some point in time and do additional oneshots for this fic. If there's anything you'd like to see (or even just talk about), please feel free to drop me a line on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hope-inthedark)! I can't promise that I'll write a ficlet for every ask, but I do promise to at least answer and give my thoughts on whatever it is you'd written to me about. 
> 
> Finally, before we get to the typical warnings for this chapter, I'd like to thank a few people. To all of you who left kudos and comments on this fic throughout the duration of my writing it: I can't even tell you how much that helped. I thought about giving up a few times, but I always came back to y'all. Also, to my dear friends Jack, Jules, and Larry: thank you for all that you did to encourage and inspire me in this. Jack, this story never would have been written without you. Jules and Larry, your support and love helped me through the toughest times of block and self-doubt. I am forever in your debt. 
> 
> Thank you all, and may you have the loveliest of days! 
> 
> All my love,   
Hope
> 
> Warnings: language, mentions of scars and healing.

Crowley woke up in an empty bed. 

He rolled over, reaching for a soft warm body and finding nothing but wrinkled sheets. They were cool to the touch, which meant that Aziraphale had been gone for at least a few minutes. 

Aziraphale didn’t leave in the middle of the night very often, but it happened. He didn’t sleep much, and although he always held Crowley until Crowley fell asleep, he would sometimes get up at a strange hour of morning and wander off to be on his own for a while. 

The first time Crowley had woken up and found a lack of angel in his bed, he’d panicked. He’d run out of the bedroom with Aziraphale’s name ripping past his lips, and by the time he’d collided with Aziraphale in the kitchen of his flat, his mind had gone to a hundred of the worst-case scenarios. Aziraphale had wrapped him up in a hug and said gentle things until his blood pressure returned to something close to normal, and they’d gone back to bed with their hands laced together. 

In the years since, Crowley had grown accustomed to Aziraphale’s odd nighttime habits. More than once, Crowley had found Aziraphale at the kitchen table at two in the morning, having a cup of tea or a bite of cake. Sometimes Aziraphale went to the library because some quote that he couldn’t quite place had been running through his head, and Crowley walked into the room to find the angel surrounded by a dozen open books. 

Tonight Aziraphale wasn’t in either place, and Crowley’s pulse quickened. Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his joggers, Crowley stepped out of the back door and wandered into the back garden. The night air whispered across his bare chest, cool and damp with summer humidity. Aziraphale’s white curls were just visible from where Crowley was standing on the porch, a bright spot in the dark garden. Aziraphale was sitting in a patch of grass next to the oak tree, his knees crunched up to his chest, and as Crowley came closer, he could see that his lips were moving. 

Crowley padded across the grass and came to a stop against the bark of the tree, watching Aziraphale. He couldn’t quite make out what was being said, but there was a smile on Aziraphale’s lips, and that was enough. 

Aziraphale stopped talking after a few minutes, but he didn’t move. He stayed still, face turned upwards toward the night sky. The same moonlight that had gotten caught in Aziraphale’s hair was now sliding along the curves of his face and pooling in his eyes, and Crowley thought that he was beautiful. 

“Hey, angel,” Crowley said, soft and low. 

Aziraphale jumped, twisting to face Crowley. 

“How long have you been standing there?” A round hand stretched out toward Crowley, who moved to take it. 

“Not long,” Crowley murmured as he folded himself into a sitting position that mirrored Azirapahle’s. “Saw you talking, though.” 

“Yes.” 

“To the Almighty, I assume.” Crowley laid down, tucking his free hand behind his head and tugging Aziraphale down with the other one. 

“Yes.” Aziraphale stretched out as well, resting his arm on top of his belly. 

“I didn’t know you still did that.” 

“I do, from time to time,” Aziraphale said. “I think I probably always will.” 

“If you’re anything like me, you will.” 

Aziraphale turned his head, a sort of awed confusion adding crinkles to the corners of his eyes. “You still…?” 

“Yeah.” Crowley pushed his hand through his hair. It was long now, nearly as long as it had been in Eden, and he liked it that way. “Not often, really, but. Sometimes.” 

“You’ve never told me that.” 

“I used to yell at the Almighty all the time,” said Crowley. “Back when things were going terribly wrong, or when we weren’t speaking, or when I’d done something terrible.” 

“And now?” 

Crowley shrugged. “I don’t really yell much anymore. It’s more, uh. Questions, and sometimes a bit of thanks.” 

“Questions,” Aziraphale laughed. “Of course.” 

“I don’t really expect that the Almighty’s going to answer me, though,” Crowley clarified. “Just, I don’t know. Sometimes I still wonder why I was allowed to Fall.” 

Aziraphale gave a considering hum. “Do you know, my dear, I ask that same question myself.” 

“Do you?” Crowley couldn’t keep the love out of his voice, and he titled his head to kiss the top of Aziraphale’s cheek. 

“I do. I don’t suppose the answer really matters, does it? Not now.” 

“No, I guess it doesn’t.” 

They were quiet for a few moments, and Crowley looked at Aziraphale as Aziraphale looked at the stars. 

“You said that you thank the Almighty as well?” Aziraphale asked, giving Crowley’s hand a squeeze. 

“Yeah. Just… for you. Because I think something could have been done to stop you coming back to me, if the Almighty had really wanted it done, but.” 

“But nothing was.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said again. 

“I am very glad that I came back to you, Crowley. Even though I didn’t know that I’d ever left you.” 

Crowley grinned and pulled Aziraphale closer. “So’m I, my angel.” 

A gust of wind blew through the garden, rustling the leaves of the oak tree and all of the plants that Crowley worked so hard to grow. It skittered over Crowley’s skin, and he shivered. 

“You must be freezing, darling,” Aziraphale tutted, pressing a warm hand to the center of Crowley’s bare chest. “Do you want to go inside?” 

“Nah.” Crowley nuzzled the side of Aziraphale’s neck, making Aziraphale giggle. “Good here.” 

“You ridiculous serpent. You’ll freeze.” 

“Won’t,” Crowley insisted. “You wouldn’t let me.” 

Aziraphale laughed again, music on the wind. “True.” 

Crowley fell asleep with his long body curled into Aziraphale’s side, his head resting against a broad chest that had long since become familiar. When he woke again in the morning, he was anything but alone. 

*********

A dozen paintings hung in the library, dark colored squares that stood out against the light cream-color of the walls and the pale oak shelving. They had been done with a hand that was precise and careful to the extreme, a fact which was obvious by the fact that they looked almost like photographs. Explosions of color broke away from blue-black backgrounds in some, feathery depictions of exploding stars. In others, hues of yellow and red and orange were overlaid in such a way that they nearly felt warm. In still others, pale blues and purples and greens were woven in gently curving spirals around a center point, creating the illusion of a galaxy that had been plucked straight from the sky and hadn’t stopped turning. 

They adorned the walls of the library because Aziraphale had insisted that Crowley put them there. He’d done the first one a year or so after they’d moved away from London, and when he’d brought it into the library with dark-stained fingertips, Aziraphale had kissed him until they both lost track of time. That night, Aziraphale had picked the painting up from where Crowley had set it on the counter, pressing a hammer into Crowley’s hand as he pulled him into the library.

“Can you mount it here, please, dear?” Aziraphale had said sweetly. He’d tapped a blank section of wall near the window and Crowley had blushed furiously and forgot to form words. When Crowley had nodded, Aziraphale had wrapped his arms around Crowley’s waist and kissed every inch of Crowley’s freckled upper back as Crowley put the painting on the wall. 

Crowley had made another painting a few months later, and another a half a year after that. Each time, Aziraphale asked him what the stars were called, and each time Crowley answered with the names that the humans had given to the stars and galaxies that he’d made. 

When Aziraphale had asked Crowley why he didn’t call them by the names that he’d given them, Crowley had shrugged. 

“Dunno. I guess… I don’t know, I think it’s something about the way the humans talk about them. More real than what I’d ever made of them.” 

“Oh?” 

“They tell stories about the stars, angel. They have all of these stories about the shapes they make in the sky, but also about how they came to be, and I like them.” Crowley had kissed Aziraphale then, and when they broke apart, he started to tell the stories that the humans told about his stars. 

Today, Aziraphale was standing in the sitting room, a strange collection of paint cans and brushes at his feet. 

“Uh,” Crowley grunted from where he was sprawled across the sofa. “Hi.” 

“I’ve had a thought.” 

“Have you, now?” Crowley winked at Aziraphale, levering himself up and setting his feet on the floor so that he could walk over to Aziraphale and kiss him hello. “Rare thing, that. Alert the media.”

“You’re insufferable,” Aziraphale said, but he laughed anyway. 

“You like it.” 

“I  _ love  _ it,” Aziraphale corrected, kissing the happy noise right off of Crowley’s lips. “Anyway. I’ve had an idea, but I’m not sure if you’ll be interested.” 

“This idea involves a bunch of interior paint?” Crowley kicked a can with a black-socked foot. 

“Yes.” Aziraphale tugged at Crowley’s shirt as if pulling out the wrinkles in it. “I was thinking that you might like to do another painting for me.” 

“I have the paints and canvases for that already, angel,” Crowley said with a wry smile. 

“I  _ know  _ that. It’s just… well, I’d thought you might like to make a larger one.” 

“Where?” 

Aziraphale cleared his throat and laid his hands flat on Crowley’s chest. “The ceiling of our bedroom, maybe.” 

Crowley raised an eyebrow. 

“You don’t have to, of course,” Aziraphale said quickly. “I can take all of this back to the shop. The man was very nice about it all, and I’ve already warned him that I might be returning it. I just thought it might —” 

“You thought it’d be a good surprise.” Crowley dropped a kiss into Aziraphale’s hair, relishing the way it felt to have Aziraphale’s body relax into his. 

“Quite.” 

“Well done, then. ‘S good.”

“You’ll do it?” Aziraphale couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. It was shining through, casting invisible light into the room. 

“Course, angel. Happy to.” 

Aziraphale wiggled in Crowley’s arms, and Crowley kissed the top of his head again. 

The next day, Crowley covered every surface of the bedroom in drop cloths and disappeared inside. When Aziraphale came in to bring him a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits (“They’re an American kind, Crowley — they’ve got bits of chocolate in”), Crowley was crouched on the ceiling like a bat, running a roller soaked in black paint over one of the few remaining spots of the original white. 

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Hello, my love.” 

“Hi.” 

“I didn’t realize you’d—” Aziraphale broke off in a body-shaking chuckle. “I should have known that I’d come in here to find you standing on the ceiling, shouldn’t I?” 

“How the fuck else was I supposed to reach, angel?” Crowley set the roller and paint-filled tray down on the ceiling and gave them strict commands not to fall. He dropped to the floor, landing on his feet and striding over to Aziraphale, a confident smirk on his face. 

“Ladder,” Aziraphale said, putting the tea and biscuits down on their cloth-covered bed. Crowley’s face fell, so Aziraphale pulled him down by the ears and planted a kiss on his lips. “Wings.” Another kiss landed on Crowley’s pouting mouth. “Scaffolding, even.” This kiss missed, catching the underside of Crowley’s chin. 

“Shut it,” Crowley said, but there was no venom in it. 

“You were  _ standing on the ceiling,  _ dear.” 

“Used to sleep on the bloody ceiling,” Crowley muttered under his breath, but he stopped feeling quite so put out when Aziraphale dragged him down for another kiss.

“What was that?” 

“Nothing.” 

Crowley sat on the edge of the bed and took a gulp of tea, smirking at Aziraphale as he slid an entire biscuit into his mouth. 

“ _ Really,  _ Crowley. Would it kill you to eat politely?” 

“Snake,” Crowley said, jabbing a sharp finger into his own chest. “Dunno how to eat ‘politely.’” He grabbed the two remaining biscuits and crammed them into his mouth, shooting Aziraphale a chocolate-and-crumb-filled grin before swallowing. 

“You are impossible.” Aziraphale didn’t physically sniff, but Crowley could hear the space where one would have gone anyway. 

Instead of answering, Crowley said “Good biscuits” and reached for Aziraphale’s hand, yanking him down onto the bed and flopping onto his back. 

Aziraphale landed next to him, a soft sound of impact slipping past his pretty lips. 

“Are you going to tell me what you’re painting?”

“When I’m done, yeah.” 

It was Aziraphale’s turn to pout. “Not now?” 

“You ask every time, angel, and every time I tell you that you’ll know when I’m done.” 

“That makes absolutely no sense, Crowley.” Aziraphale always said that, and Crowley always answered the same way. 

“Tough.” 

Crowley’s painting project was put on a rather lengthy temporary pause. He’d gotten distracted with the far more important task of kissing Aziraphale until Aziraphale forgot how to string words into sentences, something that usually took more than a few minutes to accomplish. 

Above their heads, the paint made the very clever decision of staying wet, which Crowley was very grateful for when he walked back up the walls and bent over to continue in his work. 

“Bye,” Aziraphale said softly, uncharacteristically shaky and casual.

“Love you,” said Crowley, and when Aziraphale made a mouse-like noise, Crowley laughed. 

Crowley worked on the ceiling on and off for weeks. He stopped letting Aziraphale into the bedroom once he had the outlines of the stars filled in, which meant that he had to go find Aziraphale whenever he missed him (which was often). Many nights that Crowley probably should have spent with a paintbrush in his hand were instead spent with his hand intertwined with Aziraphale’s. And it was fine to take time to do things, Crowley realized, because he had all that was left of it to do whatever he liked alongside the love of his life. 

It was three in the morning on a Thursday when Crowley snuck into the library, paint still drying underneath his fingernails. 

“Done,” he said, and Aziraphale had shut his book and crossed the room before Crowley could say a single syllable more. 

The walk to the bedroom was a short dance to the rhythm of breaths and heartbeats. When they reached the door, Crowley opened it. His eyes never left Aziraphale’s face. 

Aziraphale made a sound like a backwards whimper. He tilted his head back, eyes wide, and his grip on Crowley’s fingers became viselike. 

“Like it?” 

“Darling,” Aziraphale gasped, and Crowley grinned. 

“This is lights-on,” Crowley said, leading Aziraphale to the middle of the room. “There’s something else, give me a second.” 

Aziraphale grunted in acknowledgement, turning in a slow circle and making little happy-sounding noises with every new inch of ceiling that he could see. With a stifled chuckle, Crowley slipped over to the lightswitch, took a breath, and flicked it off. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Oh, oh my goodness.” 

“Yeah,” agreed Crowley. “That’s my favorite part, too.” 

The interior paint hadn’t been able to glow in the dark when Aziraphale had purchased it from the gentleman at the hardware shop, but once it had been given to Crowley, it had found that it actually  _ could  _ glow if it wanted to. Crowley encouraged it to do so, and so when he’d painted a pair of stars onto the ceiling, they shone. 

They were shining now, a dim light that fell over Aziraphale’s figure. It lit him up in pale yellows and soft oranges in some places, tints of blue and purple in others. 

Silently, Crowley raised his hands, making a rectangle with them and framing Aziraphale in the middle. He closed one eye and took a mental picture. A polaroid, a snapshot of a good thing. Not because he needed to do it, because he didn’t anymore. His time of memorizing every word that Aziraphale said and every action that Aziraphale took had long since passed. It had been a habit from when he’d needed to keep as many pieces of Aziraphale with him as he could because he hadn’t allowed himself to hope that he’d ever have the real thing again. 

This mental photograph wasn’t that. Crowley took it because he wanted to, not because he felt like he’d collapse without it. He took it because he wanted to remember the look on Aziraphale’s face  _ right now  _ forever. Happiness just looked like magic on Aziraphale, and when Crowley lowered his hands, there was a lopsided grin on his sharp face. 

“What are they?” Aziraphale asked, so quietly that Crowley would have missed it if he hadn’t been paying attention. 

“Let me tell you a story,” Crowley said by way of answer, making his way back to Aziraphale’s side. “Take my hand, angel?” 

Aziraphale did, unquestioning, and Crowley loved him. 

There were a few beats of silence. Aziraphale kept looking at the ceiling, and Crowley took a deep breath and clung to Aziraphale’s hand like it was an anchor. 

“Once upon a time, there was an archangel who had been born to make the stars,” Crowley began, keeping his voice low. “He was the StarMaker, and he loved it. He knew how to make different kinds of stars. Different colors, different shapes, different sizes. But he knew that they would burn out someday, die a fiery death, and the thought made him sad. So he made it so they would never die. They would explode in a shower of colors, but they would rebuild themselves. They would live on, rising from their own ashes. 

“StarMaker could have stopped once he had placed a few hundred stars, but he didn’t want to. He continued to make more, twisting starstuff into stars. And he built nurseries for them, scooping the dust of Creation up into his hands and giving the nurseries the energy they needed to build stars all on their own. He could have stopped there, too, but he still didn’t want to. StarMaker loved bringing the stars to life, and he thought that he would never love anything more than he loved them. 

“He was wrong.

“StarMaker told himself that he was happy enough, that doing his work was enough. But one day, he looked down from his perch at the top of Heaven and saw a pale-haired principality staring up at him. The little angel was watching StarMaker work, looking upwards with an expression that StarMaker recognized as awe, and StarMaker was transfixed by him. 

“And one day, the principality climbed the stairs up to StarMaker’s platform. StarMaker didn’t notice at first, but then the principality spoke with a voice that sent shocks of heat and electricity through StarMaker’s body. He introduced himself as the principality Aziraphale, and he apologized for being a bother. StarMaker dropped a half-made star back into the pool of starstuff, hastening to tell Aziraphale not to apologize, to reassure him that he wasn’t anything close to a bother. StarMaker had been mostly on his own for his entire life — he was a part of the Host, but he was also separate. He had been given a job, and it was a lonely one. 

“When StarMaker turned around, Aziraphale smiled at him, and for the first time in his life, StarMaker fell. It was an instant thing, a blinding thing, that falling in love. And StarMaker never recovered. 

“Aziraphale came to see StarMaker every day. Sometimes he would sit and watch. More often, he would ask questions. And once, he took StarMaker by the hand. Not long after that, StarMaker kissed Aziraphale. It was clumsy and strange at first, but the two got used to it. They had a lot of practice. 

“Of the two of them, Aziraphale had the far greater grasp on words. He called StarMaker a thousand lovely things, and he said ‘I love you’ like it was the easiest thing in the still-growing universe. StarMaker wasn’t like that. He was slower, quieter. Less sure of his tongue, but just as sure of his feelings. And so Aziraphale continued to call StarMaker lovely and wonderful and brilliant, and StarMaker continued to muscle his way through awkwardly-phrased compliments in return. They promised each other forever, and they swore to always, because they didn’t know that a time when they would be apart would ever come. 

“Being the StarMaker meant that accidents could happen, though, and so it came to pass that StarMaker burned himself on a string of flaming gas. Aziraphale was on his feet in an instant, healing StarMaker’s burn before it could even blister. It was the first time that StarMaker had ever seen Aziraphale look well and truly frightened, and so StarMaker did what he did best: he made stars. 

“StarMaker let Aziraphale cling to his leg as he wove heat and light and gas into two stars, one slightly smaller than the other. He tied them together with a twist of his wrist, making them inseparable for their first and second and eternal lifetimes. And then he let Aziraphale choose where to put the new stars, and those stars became theirs.

“Every time Aziraphale climbed up to see StarMaker, he would ask to see their stars, and StarMaker would turn the universe to let him see. And Aziraphale would kiss StarMaker and call him wonderful, and StarMaker would hold Aziraphale and kiss him back and  _ love  _ him.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupted faintly, giving Crowley the opportunity to take a much-needed deep breath, “are these—” 

“These are our stars, yeah.” 

“Oh.” Aziraphale swayed where he stood and knocked into Crowley, so Crowley led him to the bed. They laid down together, their hands still clasped together and eyes still trained on the stars Crowley had put on the ceiling. 

“They were the only ones I never named,” Crowley said slowly. “They were just… they were ours.” 

“Ours,” Aziraphale repeated. 

“The humans call them Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B,” explained Crowley. “But they mostly refer to them as a single unit, a together thing, and they call it Alpha Centauri.” 

Next to Crowley, Aziraphale started shaking his head. “I don’t care what the humans call them, Crowley. They’re… they’re  _ ours _ .” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said with a grin. “Yeah, they are.” 

Aziraphale turned onto his side then, looking down at Crowley with an impossibly complicated series of emotions running rampant over his face. Crowley lay motionless and let Aziraphale study him, an easy smile on his face through all of it. 

“You are so wonderful,” Aziraphale finally said. “So, so wonderful.” 

“Well, you’re beautiful,” said Crowley. “And I love you.” 

Crowley didn’t fall asleep that night. He held Aziraphale instead, telling stories about their first kiss and their first  _ I love you  _ and the first time that Crowley saw their stars after he Fell. Aziraphale asked questions and Crowley answered them, and they talked all the way through the rising of the sun. 

Eventually, Aziraphale kissed the spot on Crowley’s chest that lay directly over his heart, and he looked up at Crowley with wide blue eyes. 

“Breakfast, I think.” 

“Mm,” Crowley said, and he leaned down to kiss Aziraphale sweetly on the lips. “Breakfast.” 

It wasn’t until they reached the kitchen that Aziraphale turned to Crowley with a tiny giggle and a soft smile and said, “Thank you for the stars.” 

Crowley kissed him again. When they broke apart, he pressed his nose into Aziraphale’s hair and inhaled the clean, bright smell of him. 

“Thank  _ you  _ for loving them.” 

*********

The human heart is a muscle. The heart of a demon is one, too. 

After the Fall, most of the Fallen chose to forget that their hearts were good for anything more than beating. They turned their back on the ideas of love and friendship and good, because the angels who represented those things had hurt them. The Fallen became evil-doers, trapped in new bodies and bearing new names, and they made Hell. They did as Satan commanded, and they didn’t ask questions. 

This was true for all of them but one. 

When Crowley chose to remember that he had a heart, he chose to live a life of pain. He condemned himself to an eternity of being in love with someone who had no knowledge of his name or his existence. He chose to befriend humans and make some of them into his family, knowing all the while that they would be gone in a blink of an eye. Born and alive and dead before he could say “stop.” 

But Crowley chose to keep his heart alive and use it for more than pumping blood. He let people into it, and when they died, he let them tear it open. He loved Aziraphale, and when Aziraphale couldn’t love him back, he let Aziraphale hurt his heart, too. Crowley lived for six thousand years with a muscle in his chest that became increasingly scarred and damaged, and still he kept it beating. He had decided that getting hurt was a fair enough price for being able to love.

Crowley had earned the love of humans, and he had loved many humans in return, but he had never loved anyone so much as he loved Aziraphale. His love for Aziraphale was a part of him in a way that no other love had been or could be; it was the foundation upon which his Fallen heart was built. So Crowley carried this love with him, a torch for a version of Aziraphale who had once loved him, never daring to hope that Aziraphale might love him back. 

For six millennia, Crowley’s heart became white and rough with criss-crossed scars. He kept it beating, but it got harder to love. Too hard, sometimes. Near impossible. But then Aziraphale would smile at him again, and his heart would remember what it was beating for. 

The night that the world didn’t end, Crowley reached inside of his chest and grabbed hold of his heart, and he let it rest in a hand that was stretched out toward Aziraphale. He said,  _ Take this. I know it’s ugly. I know it’s broken, and I know I’m broken. I know you deserve better than this mangled thing, because you deserve everything perfect and good, but this is what I can give you. Take this, because it’s yours.  _

And Aziraphale had. He took Crowley’s heart with soft touches and certain kisses and whispered words, and Crowley stopped forcing himself to remember to keep his heart beating. It did it on its own. It was strong enough to beat because Aziraphale had stretched out his own hand to reveal a heart with its own set of scars, saying,  _ And you take this. It’s broken, too, because I am. But our broken pieces fit together.  _

Crowley’s scars were loud. They took the form of nightmares and beaten wooden boxes full of fragments of the lives of the people he’d loved and lost. His scars were rough and jagged and too many to count, but Aziraphale had loved them anyway. 

Aziraphale’s scars were quieter. They came in whispered stories and cold-edged memories, and when Crowley saw them, he loved them anyway too. 

Even when a wound is gone, scar tissue remains. But it fades, sometimes, and it becomes less noticeable. It becomes easier to look at and smoother to the touch. This is what has happened to the scars on the hearts of the demon who loved and the angel who never Fell for asking questions.

And Aziraphale was right, in the end. Their broken edges did fit together. They slipped into place and locked there, the seal permanent and airtight. It was as though somewhere far away, an invisible hand had lifted both of them up and tied them together with the twist of a wrist, making them inseparable for their entire lives and for whatever came after. 

Past pain doesn’t vanish in the face of eternal love. It doesn’t even cease with a little bit of divine intervention. It stays, and it lingers, and it continues to hurt. But wounds heal, and scars form, and broken pieces find their fit. 

They fit together now. The hard lines and sharp angles of Crowley’s body had learned to curve, and they were molded to the round shapes of Aziraphale as they sat together on the sofa. Crowley’s head was thrown back, and he was laughing, and Aziraphale was watching him with an enraptured expression flicking across his soft features. 

When Crowley stopped laughing, he looked down at the one who had taken his scarred heart and loved it, and he pressed a kiss into Aziraphale’s curls. And when he said, “I love you,” Aziraphale said it back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hope-inthedark)!
> 
> Also, if you would like to make any sort of creative work (art, podfic, whatever) based on this or any of my stories, consider this blanket permission to do so! I only ask that you would tag me in your work so that I can see it and share it! Thank you for being here, and thank you for reading. I hope you are having the best day!


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